Springs

[phat_levin]

whats a good brand of springs to go for for an AE101 trueno? mr revhead told me that kings are crap so who has had any experience with any other brands?

[TRD Man]

We've had a lot of experience with TRD Springs. I'd recommend them.

[Bazda]

kings are cheap and if u want to go sidewayz in your fwd get them .

[Mr Revhead]

well as i think i told you in my email theres:
TRD
jamex
whiteline
cobras and dobi sport
or custom made by ppl like snells or lovells.
havent really heard much about chamberlains.

what it really comes down to is what you are using it for. kings will prob be ok if you do mostly town driving, but they arent the cheapest, and the other are still better!

[phat_levin]

whats the advantage of getting custom made ones?

[Mr Revhead]

then u get ones made to fit your car and use exactly
remember shocks also pay a BIG part in the handling, if youv got rooted shocks or mismatched shocks new springs may not fix it.

[Leon]

I've had Kings in two cars (in combination with KYB shocks), both of which have been road / club race vehicles, and I found them pretty good actually.

I think it's a lot to do with personal taste, and what job you are trying to achieve.

The only other springs I have had were Jamex (about 7 years ago), and they were wayyyyyyyyyy too soft for even casual club race stuff.

[Mr Revhead]

the thing is many many ppl whov used them on the track reckon kings are waaay too soft. they dont reach their advertised spring rates till nearly completly bound.

but yes what your use is makes a big difference on what u chose.

[phat_levin]

well, my "use" is just to mainly lower my car but i dont want it super low - just enough to eat up that big gap between the tyre and the wheel arch.
in doing so i dont want to lose handling/performance, an upgrade in handling would be nice if its just a matter of what brand to get.....

[Leon]

my car isn't a hard out track car, as it gets used in autocross and motorkhana events ... so super low and hard would = broken car

http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/kiwiscanfly/carpics/airtoyota.jpg

That said, it sits pretty flat on Manfeild and Taupo. Also fitted is a whiteline rear sway bar, and some more neg camber

http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/kiwiscanfly/carpics/streetsprint.jpg

[Mr Revhead]

jeesuz leon! bet that jarred ya round abit!!

neg camber is a must. when ya get a wheel alignment done make sure they dial in at least 1-1.5 deg

[Leon]

yeah, that was quite a landing ... if you look carefully, then you can see I didn't have the cage by then. Probably permanently changed every panel gap on the car when I landed that one

[Dr-X]

I have lovells on my carina, and did an excellent job of getting rid of guard gap. Fairly good spring, could be harder. There's nothing wrong with kings, people just like bagging them coz they're popular. They're good springs.

[TRDWGN]

I have a mixture of 280lb/In Tanabes in the front and 200Ib/In Kings in the rear of my AE111 and i have nothing except praise for either brand... Kings as a spring manufacturer are as good as any other, the issue here is that the standard fit range are compromised between low ride height and controlling the , they like most other manufacturers do this by using progressive rate springs which IMHO is not the best answer for performance handling (well with AK's wonderful roads ). I had a set of superlows in my AE82 and it rode like a bucket of sh!t, not because Kings are no good but rather in my application the Kings did not have enough travel as well as being progressive rate, they were generally at a softer rate then the standard linear rate toyota springs for most of this travel with the exception being near the point of binding where the kings start working in (effectively) the higher spring rate range hence it rode like shite!

There really is no shortcut to having a nice low ride height and a decent handling car, spend the money on a decent shock and spring combo and do it right or leave it as it is

[atmosports]

Any spring with the correct rate will be 100% better than the besxt spring at the wrong rate. Spring rate rgeradless of if you have a car/bike/truck is one of the main things to get right in suspension, if you have that right you can eliminate that variable, to eliminate your damping as a variable is a lot harder. King springs are generally the better of what I'd term the "sport" springs out there, if your serious you'd be running Eibach/Hyperco's etc the same as we run on all our competition stuff. Springs are generally made with a +/- 5% tolerance & as such most cheaper springs are generally not even close to the marked ratings let alone close to matched. the likes fo Eibach etc are generally spot on the markings & closely matched. Eibachs etc are usually pre-sacked from the factory meaning they should not sag after use, any spring once taken past 75% of it's travel will usually sack out/sag a little bit, but once sacked out shouldn't change. Don't forget that even a linear(straight rate) spring can be slightly progressive depending on end condition.

[ChaosAD]

But if you get custom made springs, how will you know what spring rate works well with your car without trying them out?
at $400 a set it could be quite costly to just do trial and error

[Mr Revhead]

getting them custom made from an experienced maker can be a good idea.

they should have an idea ss to what wil be suited to your car.

getting the correct shock/spring combo can be hard, especially when mixing suppliers/makers. theres also the fact that ppls preferances differ