- Hey guys, what's going on?
It's Alex from Fitment Industries,
and today we're going to be talking to you about something
that is gonna sound really fundamental and almost boring,
but we promise you that it's not.
Now, we have a bunch of different coilovers
and suspension on our site, which in case you didn't know,
it's fitmentindustries.com.
We have literally thousands of questions and comments
regarding how and what this is.
Now, a coilover is pretty simple because a lot of people
just buy it to lower their car,
and then there's a probably, I'd say,
a marginal group of people that also buy coilovers
for the increased performance for actual driving,
whether that's autocross, HPD, or anything in between.
And finally, you have the people that are probably
around the last one or two percent
that actually dive into damping and rebound and compression
and spring rates and preload and all of that stuff,
and what happens is, is that there's a lot of confusion
as to what makes this whole thing work.
So, we decided we were gonna talk about it
because obviously we do a lot with suspension,
we see a lot of people ask us questions about suspension
before they make their purchase,
so we are going to dive into this a little bit.
So in front of me, I have a Silver's coilover,
this is for our own 1995 Mazda Miata,
and this is just your standard coilover,
so we're gonna get just into the basics.
So, a coilover is an abbreviated term
for a coil over shock absorber.
So, starting off with just the basics,
you have the ability to adjust within a coilover.
You're gonna have threads that allow you
to thread up or thread down your actual coilover.
And what this is gonna allow you to do,
just from the basic fundamental levels
of what a coilover does,
is that it's gonna lower your vehicle.
Because you're shortening up the size
of the actual coilover for the mounting point
to the actual wheel, and where everything is connecting,
it shortens up that travel, and then, of course,
you have a lowered car.
Now, the first and most common mistake
that a lot of people make when they install their coilovers,
is they take it right out of the box,
they throw it in their car,
they kinda eye up the suspension,
and then if they need to make some changes,
or they figure that they gotta lower it,
you know, two inches, they grab their spanner wrench,
and then they take their spanner wrench
on the locking collar, they bring it down two inches,
they loosen this bad boy up, and then there you go.
The car is lowered.
And that is not the way you wanna do it.
Before you even get started with installing your coilovers,
you're gonna wanna determine how much
you want to lower your vehicle.
That's the whole purpose of having these threads here
is to legitimately lower your vehicle.
It's gonna shorten up the overall coilover.
It's not gonna mess with preload or anything like that.
It's not gonna mess with any of the actual geometry
of what the coilover is attempting to do.
This is just essentially going to make it shorter.
A lot of people, myself included when I was young
and ambitious and didn't know anything about Google
or researching or anything like that,
decided it would just be a really cool idea
just to bring this locking collar down,
bring this down, and then I couldn't figure out
why my car rode terribly.
Well, what you're gonna wanna remember
is that there is a purpose and an intention
with having the spring setup the way that it does.
You have something that's called preload.
Now, what you're gonna wanna remember
is when you're talking about preload
and all that sort of stuff, what it really comes down to
is how much the spring is setup to absorb
your bumps and all that sort of good stuff in the road.
So, what happens is, is when people mess with
the actual location of this collar,
you ultimately mess up your preload,
which can mess up your compression,
which can mess up pretty much everything
that the coilover is attempting to do.
So, when you're breaking it in and you wanna figure out
how you wanna star with the adjustment,
you're gonna wanna start with the most basic,
which is just the bottom mount of your coilover
to get that major, major lowering
for what you want for your coilover.
Now, if you wanna get into some minor adjustment,
you definitely can still use this,
but you're just gonna wanna be careful on how
you go about using it and making sure
that you're not doing anything too drastic.
Besides the fact that the spring is going to be
one of the major players in what makes you feel your car
when you're going down the road,
your actual strut is also going to do that as well.
You're gonna wanna make sure that when you go in
for install that you're doing everything correctly,
that you're installing a torque to spec,
and that you're doing anything that's overall
going to damage your vehicle because, again,
when we go into people installing coilovers,
a lot of times they just think it's their wheels
and they can just throw them on,
they put their wheels back on, and they're right as rain.
That might work for 80 percent of vehicles,
but you're never gonna get the actual purpose
of the coilovers if you do that
because every vehicle is different.
Suspension companies are gonna try their best
to make kits specific to your vehicle,
whether that's with height, whether that's with preload,
or spring rates that you have going on,
but ultimately you are always going to have to make
some minor adjustments when it comes down
to actually installing the coilovers into your car.
So, measure it in kilograms per milimeter, usually,
that is gonna be your spring rate.
That's gonna be the distance travel needed.
So, spring rates, the higher the spring rate,
the stiffer the overall coilover is going to feel.
There are a couple other variables that play into that,
but for just the general purpose of YouTube,
that's what we're gonna say.
So if you have a higher spring rate,
you're gonna have a tougher ride.
If you have a smaller spring rate,
you're gonna have a much smoother ride,
but then, of course, with that,
you're gonna have more body roll,
you're gonna have less responsiveness around the corners,
all that sort of stuff.
So, with this specific one,
everything is already ready to go.
Silver's already preloads it for you.
You're pretty much set.
You have your major adjustment that you can do right here.
And then obviously you have these locking collars,
and these locking collars are super important
because you're gonna wanna make sure
that when you're actually threading
and once you decide where you're gonna go,
that these are set and locked,
and that's just gonna make sure that
that keeps everything in place,
that you're not gonna have to worry about anything
getting loose on you, or anything like that.
And then, of course, you have your knuckle breaker,
also known as your spanner wrench,
which is gonna help actually get those locktighted.
When you're messing with preload,
and this is where it gets a little bit confusing,
your preload is going to be right here.
So, if you loosen this up too far,
you're gonna notice that your spring
is actually going to get loose.
And what happens is when you loosen this up
to a point, you're gonna lose your preload.
And your preload is essentially what it sounds like.
It's the load that the spring faces prior to compression.
There's a bunch more math involved than that,
we're keeping it simple for you guys.
What's gonna end up happening is
you're gonna mess with your ride quality.
So, our recommendation is, and kinda the word of mouth,
is that when you tighten this,
you're gonna wanna hand-tighten it first.
And once you get it to hand-tightened capacity,
you are going to want to then tighten it
five millimeters, or there abouts.
Usually what people will say is a spanner wrench width
further to set your preload.
And what that's gonna do is that's just gonna
help establish that preload.
Now, it's not an exact science.
Each application may be a little bit different.
But, for the sake of the YouTube,
and for the sake of keeping everything as generic
but as simple as possible,
you're gonna wanna think about at least five millimeters
to set your preload if, for some reason,
you knock it loose and you get the spring all wonky.
So, the important thing is that when you're looking
at the actual coilover, the spring is gonna be about,
I'd say, 60 percent of what makes your coilover
the coilover and how you're gonna feel that on the road.
The rest is actually going to be your shock.
Now, the shock controls the unwanted spring oscillations
and it reduces the vibration, and it also handles
all those sort of things like rocking and dipping,
wheel-spinning, traction pass,
and all that other good stuff.
So, when you hit a bump, that energy,
it actually hits your springs.
What happens is, is the spring compresses,
it absorbs it, and then it transfers that energy
to the shock through its mounts and into the piston.
Now, you have a piston inside your shock.
That's just how shocks work.
And what happens is, is the shock is gonna
dampen the vibrations.
So remember, the softer springs has faster movement.
What results with that is a softer ride,
while harsher springs do the opposite.
So, softer springs are better if you're looking
for a more comfortable ride, but, of course,
you're gonna have cons with that
like we talked about before in terms of
just body movement, body roll,
and all that sort of good stuff.
Where the harsher springs are gonna be a little tougher
on the old back, but at the same time,
they're gonna react a lot faster
and handle those bumps a lot better
than something with a softer spring.
On some coilovers, you're gonna have the ability
to change the dampen.
Now, the dampen in all similar and simple ways to call it,
what that essentially is gonna do
is it's gonna change the amount of pressure allowed
for the oil inside the shock absorber
for the piston to go back and forward,
to dampen the vibrations and oscillations
that we were just talking about.
Damping is intended to essentially kinda just make sure
to control the motion of the spring,
how the tires load, and how the chasse moves,
but not really to adjust much else.
Something you're gonna wanna take into consideration
is if you're adjusting dampening
to make your car skid sideways, you're doing it wrong.
Increasing dampening essentially controls
your compression and rebound of your shocks.
Sometimes, your coil will have rebound control,
but for the most part and for most coilovers,
I would say a little bit under two grand.
You're only gonna have the availability
to adjust your damping.
Now, I say dampening a couple times,
but damping is the correct terminology.
Dampening is when you take a cloth
and you dampen it, and you clean it up,
so we're not gonna do that.
Damping is important when you wanna
fine-tune your coilover, but just know it's not required.
Damping is essentially just going to make sure
that you have the correct setup as a whole.
If you're looking to fine-tune something
for really getting involved into how you drive your car.
So, you have to break it into bits.
The first and most major part of installing your coilover
is making sure that you're setting the adjustment height
correctly prior to installation
using this bottom mount and then making sure
that you use your collar, your locking collar,
to lock that there.
And you're gonna wanna make sure all four of them
are identical, or at least as close as possible.
If you have fronts and rears,
obviously you have to take that into consideration
in terms of height.
The second thing that you're gonna wanna make sure
that you keep in mind is that you don't mess with
your preload if you're looking to lower your car
for a major purpose.
What you're gonna wanna do is
you're gonna wanna spend most of your time adjusting
with this body mount instead of using this
because if you mess with your preload,
you're actually going to make it a worse ride on yourself
and you're gonna lose a lot of the characteristics
of what makes a coilover a coilover.
Finally, when you go into the fine-tuning of damping
and things like that, you have to remember
that damping is going to affect the amount of pressure
that the oil is going to essentially allow through
that monotube shock, or if you have a dualtube
or something like that.
It's gonna allow that to have harsher or softer
amounts of vibrations and oscillations
oscillations
going through the piston.
And all of that comes from the spring,
which the spring is going to actually be absorbing,
based on an amount, or spring rate,
that you have inside of the coilover.
So, the coilover is essentially a whole one unit
that's gonna take care of everything that your car
would encounter when it comes down to hitting a speed bump.
Now, there are a couple other terminologies here
that you probably may not be too familiar with,
and I'm gonna go into a little bit of that.
So, when we talk about damping,
you have to remember that in the simple English words,
if you go to increase the rebound damping,
this means the spring is gonna require more force
to push the piston back up to the shock
and to return to a resting position more slowly.
If you loosen that, or if you make that less,
it's obviously going to do the opposite.
In my professional world of working here
at Fitment Industries and helping people
with their coilovers, wheels, and tires,
and all that sort of stuff,
I recommend pretty much one thing, and one thing only,
that when you first go into buying a coilover,
make sure you know what you're doing
before you mess with any of this fine-tuning stuff
because you're more than likely gonna mess it up
if you don't fully understand it.
A lot of people go coils, and what you're gonna notice
is that when you lower the car and you make sure
you have your preload set correctly,
90 percent of you are going to be happy.
When you go into damping, when you go into rebound,
when you deal with spring rates and things like that,
that's for that last 10 percent.
And if you are in that last 10 percent,
you're gonna wanna make sure that you know
what you're messing with when you go into this
because this is ultimately what's gonna control
the feel of your car from the ground up.
And if you start messing with things
because you wanna get a little lower,
or you start messing with the preload or the damping,
or something like that, you may not know
how to get it back, in which case, you're gonna
have a fun time going on forums
trying to figure out what the best way to do it.
This is one of those modifications that sometimes
when it goes down to fine-tuning,
you just need to install it, you need to drive it,
you need to see how it feels, and you need to react
to it by adjusting after you've drive it.
It's kinda like messing with an old 350 and timing.
You just go in there, you run it, you see how it feels,
and you adjust, so on and so forth,
depending on what you're doing.
So, we talked about what happens
when you dampen the rebound,
but you also have compression damping
and it works in the same way, but in the opposite direction.
Increasing compression damping means
that we require more force to compress the damper.
And decreasing the compression dampening
means it requires less force.
So, if you're confused on how we're explaining this,
we apologize.
There's a little bit of math,
there's a little bit of science behind this.
You can rewatch the video to explain it,
but what ultimately you're gonna wanna remember
is that there is two-way adjustable coilovers that exist.
Now, the Silver's here in front of me
does not have that, but it does have the damper control.
And what this is gonna do is gonna give you
exactly what you need, unless you're going into
some very fine-tuning, in which case,
we probably recommend something more along the lines
of KW with their V2 or V3 components.
Your coilover is gonna also have other parts,
like a bump stop, you're gonna have jam nuts,
you're gonna have washers, you're gonna have your collars,
and pretty much everything else that is meant
to either connect it to your car
or prevent the coilover from doing damage to yourself.
The bump stop is probably the most common piece
that tries to keep your coil from essentially
self-imploding, it's just kinda how it works.
So, in short, when we kinda circle it all back around,
the two probably most complex things about this
are gonna be the compression and the rebound.
So, compression is when the piston moves into the body,
rebound is when it leaves the body.
And how you increase or decrease that is gonna
how your coilover is going to adjust
for any sort of bumps that happen in your ride.
So, finally, if you are looking to install these coilovers,
you watched this video and now your head is spinning
more than ever because I tossed a bunch of words,
technical stuff at you, take it like this,
when you go to install your suspension,
hopefully you bought it from us, hopefully you did,
but if you didn't, it's completely cool, we understand.
It just hurts our feelings a little bit,
but we understand,
that you first are going to wanna make sure that your coils
are set at the right height, that you're not messing
with your preload, everything is set to the same size,
and then you install.
You're gonna wanna make sure that everything
rides correctly, and if doesn't, or something feels loose,
that you obviously go underside and check it again.
If you're looking to get more complex,
you wanna get into the damping,
you wanna get into rebound and compression
and things like that, you certainly can do that.
And a lot of coilovers are gonna offer damping control,
sometimes they'll even offer additional control,
depending on what you're looking to buy.
But, at the same time, remember that predominately
what you're gonna feel is the spring rate
when you're going around the corners,
you're gonna feel that shock absorber,
depending on what you do with the piston,
in terms of your damping control,
can affect how it feels, but it's gonna be minute changes.
If you're a simple guy, you're just looking to install this,
just be sure that you don't mess with the preload too much
because you're gonna wanna make sure
that you keep that suspension, or the spring, I'm sorry,
nice and tight and snug, and of course,
the word of mouth is is to get it hand-tight,
and then of course, go an additional five millimeters
or something that's along a spanner wrench width.
So, in short, if you guys are interested
in picking up some suspension components, maybe Silver's,
Eiboch, AirLift, or something like that,
be sure to check out fitmentindustries.com suspension.
You can also just go to /AirLift, or Silver's,
if you're looking to get some nice,
affordable suspension components.
But if you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment.
We get a ton of emails about this every single day,
so we're gonna start putting these videos out more.
They're not as fun, not as exciting,
but at the same time, they're educational.
We wanna help you guys just understand
what these fancy little guys do
'cause there are a lot of moving parts
that make coilovers so awesome, but at the same time,
a lot of people purchase them for one purpose
and that's to lower their car.
If you're looking to get into more advanced modification
of your coilovers, you definitely can do that,
but the most important thing is
obviously, make sure you're doing it the right way.
But, I'm Alex from Fitment Industries.
If you guys need to drop a comment,
feel free to let us know, otherwise be sure to subscribe.
But we will see you later. Peace.