I am going to fit coil covers soon and I’m looking for the best ones to have fitted. They need to be fully adjustable both height and ride. At the moment she’s fitted with 30mm Eibach lowering springs and even though the stance is great,the ride is awful. Also she won’t clear many speed bumps etc.
I want my car to sit a little lower but have a pretty smooth road ride. I won’t be tracking her.
Any helpful suggestions would be appreciated.
Thank you Mick👍… I take it the road use of these is nice n “smooth” as opposed to yellow Billie’s wrapped with 30mm lowering Eibach springs?
Is it possible to lower the car slightly on “Rs” and still get a smooth ride?
Yellow Speed Dynamic Pro Sport have been mentioned to me too…virtually same price as these Meister’s…
Possibly more than £300 and obviously depends on where you go. If all the bolts are easily removed and adjusted ok it shouldn’t cause extra work. On a 14 plate I guess it shouldn’t cause much grief but hey I’m no expert on these matters.
Had mine on the previous NC set to 30mm lower with lowering springs on standard Bilsteins then I ditched those and went with the MeisterR’s.
Much much better, firmer but definitely not shaking your bones or rattling you teeth over every bump. They have the firm or soft settings or anything in-between adjusters.
You need to take a trip to Roddisons n Sheffield one day, make sure he’s (Paul) going to be there for a chat about suspension, that’s who fitted mine and set it up. This latest car has Sportives by Meister, they are good but I’m not overwhelmed by them. Having had those in the link fitted on my the previous car I just may take the plunge and get them swapped. It’s a good deal of money to spend though but well worth it me thinks.
I had MeisterR CRD’s fitted to my car this year, replacing the Bilstein/-30mm Eibach spring setup. I too was hitting too many ramps and I actually raised the ride height after fitting. Such a difference and I haven’t clipped a ramp yet. The ride and handling have also been improved significantly and I am happy with what I’ve spent. To swop all four corners only cost me £40 via my friendly mechanic that I’ve used for umpteen years. The only other cost was a visit to a Hunter alignment tyre shop to make sure everything was in order and because it had been adjusted for the Eibach springs, no twiddling was necessary, so that was a freebie.
I had those meister zeta crd’s fitted about a month ago and they are lovely.
spring ride is nice.
I started at 8 clicks from soft on the damping but have taken up to 12 so that it’s a bit firmer!
they cost me £200 to have the old shocks n springs taken off and the meisters put on, height set, and basic alignment and it took the guy 4 hours to do the job.
so if someone tell you its going to take 2 days and cost £600 THEY ARE LYING!!!
also you don’t NEED to have the corner weights done, its an option thing for a car that’s just a road car!
To be honest spending money on adjustable dampers and new springs is one part of the equation. Then you need to think whether you need/should change the bushes in the car. Then you should get the wheel geometry checked and adjusted.
But imho none of this is needed unless you can get someone to set/explain/adjust the dampers and the spring preload on the car (if you can do that on your setup). Therefore if you need to budget for new dampers and springs, you have to add that to the calculation.
@ckleanth is correct you do need to budget for extras.
the zeta crd’s cost me £800 with I think £10 for delivery
I also brought 2 rear anti-roll bar drop links* (£15 each),
the basic install and alignment cost me £200 (not mates rates but defiantly good customer rate)
please note not all coil-overs come pre-assembled and pre-spring weighted out of the box like the zeta’s do.
lastly, I took it to an mx5 specialist for an mx5 fast road alignment which cost £90.
so in all, it cost me £1130 in parts and labour to switch my tired shocks n springs to nice n fresh coil-overs
I haven’t included petrol costs for all the travel, with travel and lunch money and tipping for good work it would bump it up by another £80 I guess.
*drop links, it was better to have them and not need them than to get halfway through installation and find out “oh ■■■■ I need a drop link and it’s gonna take 2 days to get”
turns out I did NEED them as the old ones were, after 8 years on the car, corroded on!
we put penetrating oil on everything 3 days before the job and while the P oil did its job on everything the one thing it didn’t work on was the drops links.
The guys who are going to work on my suspension for me do specialise in this type of work and come highly recommended.
I have spoken to them again yesterday and expressed my views on possibly fitting the Meisters as a lot of you say they are very good. These guys however, say that they would recommend Yellow Speed Pro coil covers as they will give me a more comfortable drive on our roads compared to Meisters. They will fit Meisters for me no problem if that’s what I choose. They also do the geo after these are fitted.
So…does anyone here know much about the Yellow Speed Pro? They’re roughly the same price as Meisters…
you have the answer to your question. Why do you want to change the spring / dampers to your car?
Your spring is your suspension. the damper absorb the bump. If the damping is too low the ride will be very bouncy, if damping is too high the wheel will not absorb the bump as quick and the recoil will be slow as well so you will feel each bump. What you have adjustable on the spring is the preload, to change ride height you need to use same stiffness but lower length springs to match your car.
Now if you live in a rough area, the difference between the two is the damping range of the suspension. if the specialist suggests that the Yellow Speed Pro damping characteristics allow to set for softer ride compared to the MeisterR CRD, I’d go with that they recommend you to do.
Not sure what that means . Are you talking about the spring rate or the damping rate? Kg is the amount of stuff (mass) of something tangible.
spring constant k (or spring rate) is force over displacement so units are Newtons / metre (N/m)
damping constant units are N s / m
(its a bit difficult to explain what this is but its a measure of damping force)
Fd = d . Ẋ (where Ẋ is the derivative of distance (= velocity) so units are m/s. Therefore if you rearrange d = Fd / Ẋ so units are N / (m/s) = N.s / m
damping ratio is a dimensionless measure describing how oscillations in a system decay after a disturbance
I now understand what you referring to, N.s/m is dimensionally equivalent to to kg/s so the numbers you quoted are about the damping rate for each brand of shock absorber.
btw I had a typo before. And below I may talk completely gibberish as I work in the aerospace industry and not automotive. So here it goes:
The spring rate is what you would describe as the Force required to move a spring by certain amount. If we assume we express the force as mass, F = m.g = 7kg . g where g = 9.81 m/s² this equates to some value.
if we assume this number talks about the spring rate, thus the spring rate is 7 kg /mm and an MX5 weigh 1200kg.
At a 50/50 weight distribution each spring with the car stationery will experience 300 kg. so 300/7 = 42mm
At an extreme situation, assume all the weight is applied just on the front suspension thus
600/7 = 85mm
Not sure but I think this displacement is a bit on the small side if these numbers were spring rate. However you are right, the higher the spring rate number the stiffer the spring would be.
If we assume these numbers talk about damping rate, you will need a mathematical model of the suspension. The damping rate is effectively a means of how the damping force opposes the motion of your suspension characteristics. A higher damping rate number means that the damping force can be higher. This means you can absorb more force out of the suspension meaning that the reaction load on the vehicle can be lower (so your suspension can absorb bigger bumps)
However damping is adjustable on both shock absorbers and this means that the range on both shock absorbers can be adjusted. It basically mean that one shock absorber may be more “adjustable” than the other. (lets say one can go from 10-20 kg/s and the other can go from 15 to 35 kg/s - no idea if this is the case.
If we assume these numbers talk about damping ratio - this is dimensionless number and wouldn’t have anything to do with kg. as I said damping ratio describe how oscillations in a system decay after a disturbance. Lets take the number 7, one needs to also define lets say vehicle speed and the disturbance - usually in the automotive industry they would have some standards for this. but suffice to say I don’t think its that either.
