So removed front fork again, grinded away the excess welds around the alignment tit but still had to grind away the front fork bore to get it to fully seat. Managed to get about another .20" drop. So far I have 14.5" front & rear hub center to fenders. I will probably raise the rear up just a touch more to maintain the factory rake but it appears I'm pretty much maxed out in lowering the vehicle in the front. Something is definitely up with the aluminum top spacer. I currently have it set up in the order from top to bottom: OE mount, aluminum top spacer, teflon ring & metal ring, then the spring and rest of the assembly. There were two rubber rings that also came with the kit but I didn't see where they were supposed to go and the instructions on website made no mention of them. I can't see those rubber rings helping out in this case though.
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MPP AWD/Performance Coilover Impression and Installation
- Thread starter beastmode13
- Start date
All the rubber suspension bushings need to be retorqued at the new lower ride height. Otherwise, they are all actively twisting downwards, artificially increasing the spring rates and holding the car up.
Also experiencing this exact issue during my install today. Perch set to 30mm as per recommended settings has the car sitting higher than stock, alignment dowel fully seated. This is on a AWD with comfort coil overs. @MountainPass any ideas?
This is fairly easy to do when car is on jack stands. Just use a jack to compress the suspension until the weight is off the jack stand. Make sure you place a block of wood as cushion between suspension and jack.
We had the same issue. To get to 1.25 inches lower than stock 3P ride height, we had to get pretty far toward the end of the threads for the spring perch in front. Not so much for the rear. I think there is about a centimeter of extra height in the column vs. the helper spring. You can always use the latter if you need more drop.
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I’m reading through this with great interest as I’m shopping coilovers.....mainly MPPs either Comfort or Sport. Why can’t we get @MountainPass to chime in on all this confusion with an explanation on all this? We need information on these installs and questions that both prof. installers have as well as the DIYers on how this aluminum spacer replacement for the helper spring affects things and why the difference in front height and does that 1/4 inch to almost stopped out in the spring perch affect things?
Maybe Sasha or one of the Techs can read back a page or two in this thread and answer the several questions we have on this. Has anyone emailed @MountainPass or Sasha?
Ski
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Yea I'm at the bottom of the threads now and it seems like a little bit of a drop, but this does seem very odd/unintended. I would think at the bottom of the travel the car should be pretty much slammed, not slightly lowered vs stock. I guess I could swap to the helper Spring but I figured it was excluded for a reason?
What MPP stated was that the aluminum top column was put in to reduce noise principally with the Comfort coilover setup. They believe that the helper springs on the sports coilover setup on the other hand were not making any shifting noises. They put the column in both kits to make things uniform.
I also had an issue with the end link and fork being impossible to line up when I installed the coilover with the end link "bracket"'s concave side facing towards the center of the car, if that makes sense. I had assumed that the stock orientation of that bracket (concave facing in) was how these would also function but only one of the endlink or the fork's indexing dowel would be able to line up. But they seemed to line up fine when I used the coilover that I had assumed was for the other side of the vehicle (end link bracket facing out)...
Not sure if anyone else had this issue or if I'm missing something/it doesn't matter.
Not sure if anyone else had this issue or if I'm missing something/it doesn't matter.
I can assure you that using more of the adjustment range to get the drop required with the top column spacers (vs. the prior helper springs) has no effect at all on functionality, ride, or handling. I've got mine pretty close to the end of the adjustment range, and both ride and handling are better than stock.
No one is actually emailing us to ask, we are always happy to help! We haven't been getting notified of posts like these, so I have to go digging to find them.
You can set the perch height anywhere the threads allow, there is no negative side effect of this.
When we see a way we can improve our products, we do it immediately. It would have been much simpler for our installation instructions and general documentation to leave the kits alone even though there was some spring noise, but we couldn't sleep at night knowing they weren't perfect. It is true, we have to now go back and redo all our recommended heights and settings now that the spacers have replaced the tender springs. If we could keep even one set of AWD coilovers on the shelf this would have been easy, but when we get them in stock, we ship them to our customers right away. They have been super patient and we can't keep them waiting any longer!
For Amar's question, there is 1 part number for the fork, it is used on both sides of the car. The only thing you need to worry about during the install is making sure the end link bracket is in the right position. If you are not low enough you need to make sure you retorque all rubber bushings in the suspension at the lower ride height. When they get preloaded in the stock position they will literally hold the car up.
Hi Everyone, Sasha here. It sounds like we need to clarify things a little as there is some confusion!
So here's a little bit of history to that it all makes sense.
Initially, our kits were supplied with a tender spring. In some instances, we had a problem where the tender spring was slightly crooked when blocked (the term for when the tender spring is fully compressed). This was causing the bottom of the main spring to sit at an angle, which would cause the spring to bow when compressed, and in certain rare cases this would cause the spring to rub on the aluminum upper top mount - as the top mount protrudes around 2" below where the spring seats. This was more of a problem with the comfort kits where the softer front spring used was more prone to bowing.
Our solution was to remove the tender spring - as it is not needed for the relatively soft spring rates that we use, and to provide an aluminum spacer that would utilize the OEM rubber isolator at the top.
The only downside to this solution is that it requires the spacer to be 37mm tall or else the spacer would hit the OE aluminum top hat which would cause noise and vibrations! The blocked tender spring is shorter than the spacer, yes, but only by 8mm or so. So this simply requires lowering the spring perch by an additional 8mm.
This does bring us towards the bottom of the perch adjustment at our lowest recommended height settings of 105mm battery height (with 19" wheels - so closer to 110mm with 20's). For any of you that are having trouble lowering the car as low as you'd like, there are 3 options:
#1 - Run with no spacer, and put the spring directly on the aluminum top hat. This is how we supplied our original Sports RWD kits and there is no issue with this, other than higher noise and vibration transmission. This would be fine for aggressive / track driving where NVH was a secondary concern.
#2 - Contact us and we can see if there is something we can do. Our first revision of spacers were 3mm taller than our current ones, so we're happy to provide those if you're only looking for another 4mm of drop or so.
#3 - KW's kits use a thinner spacer that does not use the OEM rubber. Again there is more NVH transmission with this method, but it is about 7-8mm thinner than our spacer, effectively allowing you to lower the car around 10mm from our spacer. Contact us and we can order these upon request. I know right now they are back-ordered.
We do not recommend using the tender spring - and our most recently shipped kits no longer include a tender spring.
Ideally we would have more threads on the damper (to match our RWD design), and that was our specification upon ordering but unfortunately, that detail was missed. Future kits will have more threads available, HOWEVER - we still do not recommend lowering beyond 105mm battery height - for battery protection and potential long term front axle durability reasons.
For any of you that are having trouble getting that low, first please check that the fork is fully seated and that the damper is sitting on the step on the fork. If the alignment knub has excess weld that is causing interference please let us know - that would need to be investigated! Beyond that please contact us and we'll make sure we take care of you, as you know we always take care of you guys!
Thanks again for all of your continued support and again - the best way to get a hold of us if you have any questions is via email. We generally answer within 24 hours or faster if we know there is a car at a shop being worked on, in which case we generally respond in real-time - even on weekends!
So here's a little bit of history to that it all makes sense.
Initially, our kits were supplied with a tender spring. In some instances, we had a problem where the tender spring was slightly crooked when blocked (the term for when the tender spring is fully compressed). This was causing the bottom of the main spring to sit at an angle, which would cause the spring to bow when compressed, and in certain rare cases this would cause the spring to rub on the aluminum upper top mount - as the top mount protrudes around 2" below where the spring seats. This was more of a problem with the comfort kits where the softer front spring used was more prone to bowing.
Our solution was to remove the tender spring - as it is not needed for the relatively soft spring rates that we use, and to provide an aluminum spacer that would utilize the OEM rubber isolator at the top.
The only downside to this solution is that it requires the spacer to be 37mm tall or else the spacer would hit the OE aluminum top hat which would cause noise and vibrations! The blocked tender spring is shorter than the spacer, yes, but only by 8mm or so. So this simply requires lowering the spring perch by an additional 8mm.
This does bring us towards the bottom of the perch adjustment at our lowest recommended height settings of 105mm battery height (with 19" wheels - so closer to 110mm with 20's). For any of you that are having trouble lowering the car as low as you'd like, there are 3 options:
#1 - Run with no spacer, and put the spring directly on the aluminum top hat. This is how we supplied our original Sports RWD kits and there is no issue with this, other than higher noise and vibration transmission. This would be fine for aggressive / track driving where NVH was a secondary concern.
#2 - Contact us and we can see if there is something we can do. Our first revision of spacers were 3mm taller than our current ones, so we're happy to provide those if you're only looking for another 4mm of drop or so.
#3 - KW's kits use a thinner spacer that does not use the OEM rubber. Again there is more NVH transmission with this method, but it is about 7-8mm thinner than our spacer, effectively allowing you to lower the car around 10mm from our spacer. Contact us and we can order these upon request. I know right now they are back-ordered.
We do not recommend using the tender spring - and our most recently shipped kits no longer include a tender spring.
Ideally we would have more threads on the damper (to match our RWD design), and that was our specification upon ordering but unfortunately, that detail was missed. Future kits will have more threads available, HOWEVER - we still do not recommend lowering beyond 105mm battery height - for battery protection and potential long term front axle durability reasons.
For any of you that are having trouble getting that low, first please check that the fork is fully seated and that the damper is sitting on the step on the fork. If the alignment knub has excess weld that is causing interference please let us know - that would need to be investigated! Beyond that please contact us and we'll make sure we take care of you, as you know we always take care of you guys!
Thanks again for all of your continued support and again - the best way to get a hold of us if you have any questions is via email. We generally answer within 24 hours or faster if we know there is a car at a shop being worked on, in which case we generally respond in real-time - even on weekends!
For sure don't use the helper spring. See the post above and email us if you have any further questions!
Thank you for such a great review and all of the information you've been providing in this thread! We really appreciate and love that you're so happy with the coilovers!
Yes they are - the recommended starting perch offset in the front is 15mm, not 30mm as posted above.
Again, don't use the tender springs. See the post above and email us if you have any questions!
The adjustments on our dampers affect the low and mid-speed ranges, the high-speed forces do not change. This is VERY noticeable on the street, as most of the little bumps, splits in the road and other road imperfections cause the suspension to move in that mid-speed range. The high-speed range comes into play when you're hitting potholes, big bumps on the highway and things like that.
For suspension that is both capable on the track and as comfortable if not more so than OE on the road, the adjustment range we have is pretty ideal. We have just enough high-speed forces in the damper to be composed on the track without being harsh or bothersome on the road, and the low-speed adjustment range is so massive that every click is very noticeable and you can easily pick your ideal setting.
There was some mention about the dampers being hard to adjust and needing to remove the frunk - what we've done on our car is drill a small 1/8" hole in the frunk and then you can access the rebound adjuster with an Allen key. All other adjustments can be made on the ground by sticking your hand in there. If you're skinny enough you can even get at the rear rebound adjuster without needing to jack the car up!
Adding spacer at the top and lowering the spring perch at the bottom to offset it has zero effect on the characteristics of the suspension, and the preload of the spring doesn't change (if it did, as the damper body length doesn't change, the ride height of the car would change!)
The body length/preload adjustment is a common misconception that has started with JDM type coilovers with body length and spring height adjustment (I used to also only adjust suspension with the body length 10+ years ago so I know where you're coming from!). You'll notice that on any real top tier racecars that there isn't anybody length adjustment - just spring perch offset. Why?
The reason is that the body length is set for the parameters of the car. You know the travel range you want (i.e. the car should not be able to hit the ground, no suspension arms should hit the chassis), and so the damper length is set so that at full compression, with the bump rubber nearly fully compressed, the body of the car is close to but not hitting the ground after taking into consideration tire deflection.
Once that is set, there is no reason to ever adjust it unless you're changing something major (like tire diameter or drop spindles for example). At that point, all height adjustment is done with the spring perch offset.
How much "preload" is on the spring at full droop is really an inconsequential value. In fact, if the damper has enough travel (as our AWD sports coilovers do) you can have so much droop that you have almost no preload when the suspension is fully extended. This gives the best ride quality over large pot-holes and drops in the road, as there is little to no chance that the suspension will ever max out on droop.
If you've ridden in cars that have only 1" of droop or so, you'll know that they ride horribly, even with soft springs. Why? Because as soon as a wheel encounters a dip in the road greater than the amount of droop available, the suspension effectively goes solid and the car falls into the hole!
For future suspension installs with those types of coilovers my advice is to set the body length so that the damper has 40% droop travel and 60% compression travel, assuming the car won't hit the ground when fully compressed. Then do the rest with the spring perch adjustment. If there is no tender spring, that will likely mean having almost zero preload on the spring to get the most droop possible.
Unfortunately, some of these kits just don't have much available suspension travel, so you're stuck in that case with not being able to do much!
Just want to share some insights into living with MPP Sports Coilover. My installation is well documented in this thread. I started my ride height at +10mm of MPP recommendation, lowered to +5mm two months ago, then back to +10mm couple weeks ago. I didn't have any more noise than stock setup until couple weeks ago when the dreaded main spring rub against the upper mount aluminum collar. The sound on the right side was of mild spring noise reverberation noise, the left side was the disconcerting clunking sound of lose parts. I was able to eliminate the noise from both sides without turning a wrench by spraying a thin coat of silicone lube on the aluminum collar where it overlaps with the mainspring. I wipe away any excess lube from the collar so as not to have drips on the parts below. I believe I would need to reapply the silicone lube when it is eventually washed or worn away. For those that are able and don't mind jacking up the car, this would be a quick remedy.
Probably any spray lube would work. Just a matter of how long it will stay on the intended surface.
Probably any spray lube would work. Just a matter of how long it will stay on the intended surface.
CrewKize
Member
Alright finally got the box from Canada today. Going thru to make sure everything is there and looks like I’m missing the leflon shims.... how important are these ?
Teflon shim is packed in the KW box. Check all the cushions, my was under one of the cushion.
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