so a couple months back i bought koni struts and hotchkis sways for my car. have had the htechs installed for a couple years now so eventually ill replace them, but anyways. installed the sways and front struts (the rear circlips sprung and wouldnt hold the retaining bushings on the strut rod and just pushed up through the car) so ive been riding on stock rear struts for a couple months.

out of ignorance i set everything to full stiff and forgot about it, as it did make the car handle slightly better, but i wasnt very impressed bc it didnt live up to the hype by other tC members about handling improvements over stock.

so i figured, hell ill upgrade to some 17x8 and get 245s.. wanted to make sure theyd fit first so i got some cheap nexen 3000s. slapped em on and noticed a bit of grip improvement but still had a pretty noticable unsteadiness and understeer tendacy in hard corners and high speed curves.

drove my buddies 500+whp srt4 the other day, noticed it felt more stable than my car and i said WTF.

got to thinking... wow, im still riding on stock struts in the rear with the front set to full stiff on the sways and struts. so i called koni and ordered some new hardware to finish the job, popped up my wiper cowl and softended up the struts. figured id leave the sways full stiff front/rear just to see if the struts made a difference.

holy friggen shyt. the car handles completely different now, with a muchhh more balanced feel and smoother ride/handling.

pulled the tires off and noticed 3 of 4 of my endlinks are FUBARd, im sure thats not helping.

1. i feel like a f tard bc i let it go this long
2. im ecstatic it made this big of a difference, i wouldnt believe it unless i had felt it
3. cant wait to install the rear (how still should i go since u have to remove em to adjust em?)
4. gonna get some sticky tires and new end links and springs and hit up some auto-x's.


am i out of my mind or does having the front THAT stiff throw off a FWD that considerably? amazing...

how much more of an improvement do u think i can expect with the koni rears, some newer stiffer springs and new endlinks?

are endlinks worth the money to go adjustable? if so, why?

 

My front Hotchkis bar is on the soft setting - though I should really set it to stiff to try to cure some of the "throttle lift oversteer" I get.

 

at the point i was at, id like a little oversteer over the abundance of unsettling understeer id get, i can tell with a little tweaking and stiffer rear it would prolly help a bit

 

Oversteer? Man... I had too much of that this weekend. Autox in the rain. Spun twice on first run.

Fun... but the time wasn't what I was hoping for.

 

haha yea, much better feelings than understeer imho. that sucks man. autox in the rain ftl! ive never autox but i wanna try!

 

It's a blast. I haven't run that hard in the rain before either, so it was an experience. Got 2nd of 5 cars in my class, so I was happy.

It is worth looking into if you're curious... trust me. You'll love it.

 

Stiffening the front bar will just negate the stiffness of the rear bar and you'll be right back at the stock understeer. Just be glad you have the front sway in. Even on the softest setting, it's still stiffer than the stock one. Try running the Hotchkis rear on the max setting with the stock front...it's a disaster lmao.

 

Been there and done that. It took me a while to get around to putting the front bar in.

And ya, the return of understeer is kind of what has stopped me from changing the front at this point.

 

I sold my front bar the minute I saw how long it would take to install it lol. I like my twitchy rear end.


Btw, if you haven't noticed, I finally got to AutoX :D. Check out my thread in the motorsports forum for pics/in-car video and make fun of my slow ___ .

 

i didnt think the front install was bad at all imho

 

My car was only a few weeks old and I wasn't ready to touch anything in that area lol. I spent 3 days doing my turbo install, so I don't mind long jobs...I just didn't want to drop the subframe on my brand new car lol.

Plus I sold it for like $125, so I got a twitchy rear and extra money.


Get the Dezod endlinks if your stock ones are fubar'd. That's one thing I regret not getting when I got the sway bars.

 

thanks for sharing flint

what tires were you using?

 

RE-01Rs that I've been on all season. They're not so great in the rain. Would have rather had my snows on. Hehe...

 

minus the body roll with stock ones. but yea sway bars <3