Ho yeah!
Lets go!
It's a good today.
Aw, look at that poor little girl trying to
hold that wheel all by herself.
Oh my god, look!
(laughs)
Oh, it's Jared.
Taylor how come you're letting that girl hold that wheel?
Oh (bleep) sorry.
Hey guys what's going on, it's Alex from Fitment Industries
and today we're gonna be talking about coilovers.
So, we made a video a couple months ago talking about
breaking down a coilover, and it had a lot of math,
it had a lot of different definitions, and how things work.
And you guys got a little confused,
I got a little confused, and overall coilovers as a whole
are kind of a very sophisticated after market,
you know, component of your car.
So we thought we would actually just talk about coilovers,
to help give you just a little bit more knowledge about
the basics of what they are and what they're intended to do.
So coilovers as a whole have been something that have
existed in the game for, I'd say, a pretty long time.
When you consider the fact that coilovers are inherently
from the racing community.
They do have a lot of function.
We talked about in the past how lowering your car
is probably one of the best things you can do,
and one of the first things that you should do,
you know if you head over to www.fitmentindustries.com
and pick up some suspension, wink, is for the plug,
and of course don't forget to subscribe,
there's the other plug,
so that we can keep making cool videos like this.
Where was I going?
Coilovers as a whole have been one of those things that
has great form and great function.
It makes your car look better,
it makes your car perform better,
it makes your car feel better,
and everything in between.
Coilovers originated a long time ago, actually,
in the racing circuit,
that allowed racing teams to adjust suspension on the fly
on what they needed to do, depending on the track
that they were at.
Over time, coilovers were naturally
a very expensive component but just like everything
in the world, as more competitors got into the scene,
they obviously got more and more affordable.
To this day, coilovers are probably one of the
biggest things and are considered the reason that
lowering springs ultimately got shut out in the mid 2005.
So coilovers as a whole are a very cool part and what they
are is essentially just a replacement for your stock
suspension component, usually your strut and your spring.
So there are multiple types of coilovers.
You have your OEM style spring shock assemblys,
you have your slip fit coilovers,
and you have your full body coilovers.
Now, your OEM style assemblys are just pretty much
based off of conventional shock strut assembly
that's surrounded by it's own coil spring.
They're typically not adjustable
and they have fixed length bodies.
So fixed length bodies just pretty much means that if you
look down here, this piece will actually twist either way.
Those ones don't have that.
So, you're probably not really that common with that kind
of coilover, and predominately,
nobody really is, or runs them.
The second type of coilover that you have is what's called
a slip fit, and a slip fit coil just pretty much consists
of just a hollow threaded tube.
It slips over and sits on an existing shock perch,
and then with jam nuts it will compress and decompress
it's own spring to alter ride height.
Now, you might be wondering what does that mean,
well that's a pretty good question,
it pretty much just allows you to dump your car.
It doesn't have that many performance modifications to it.
It's strictly for an aesthetic point of view.
Now that gets us to the third and probably the one that
99 percent of you know about,
and that is just your
full body replacement coilover system.
Now these guys actually fully replace
usually the spring and shock of your suspension system.
They're overall the most customizable,
they do the most, they're the most exciting to look at,
they're kind of confusing when you do stare at them.
Now these are Silvers coilovers.
So if you guys didn't know we actually host Silvers.
It's a great brand for pretty much any application,
they have so many makes and models,
and they're actually a pretty good price.
So we have Tein, we have Eibach, but we also have Silvers,
these things are around $1100.
These are for a Mazda Miata, that's why they're so small,
it makes me look like I actually have muscles when I pick
it up with one hand which is entirely not the case.
Higher end full body coilovers feature like,
lower body, and lower mounts that can be screwed
in and out to further ride height adjustment.
They have all sorts of different things,
they can include bump stops, dust boots,
and upper mount assemblys.
Pretty much everything that you would need to have
in terms of like, a fully customizable part
that won't necessarily break the moment that you put it in.
It will actually last quite a long time.
So the shock body is the heart of the coilover and that's
what actually gonna do a lot of the work.
It helps eliminate oscillations and vibrations and
tilting and rolling and all sorts of stuff,
and it pretty much controls it all inside the shock body.
So the rocking and the pitching and the dipping,
all of that stuff essentially gets harnessed inside the
shock body and then it gets controlled with different
types of viscous fluids.
So inside the shock body is a hydraulic fluid filled tube,
and piston.
The piston pushes that high pressure fluid
through the shock valve,
and that controls how it responds to the spring.
Kinetic energy is harnessed through the movement,
turns into heat energy, which sounds really really fancy,
but it's actually not that fancy.
That dissipates within the shock fluid.
So the shock fluid essentially acts as a harness
for the energy to help dissipate the heat,
dissipate the movement,
all the stuff that's happening inside.
And then what also happens is that you have that piston
that has little tiny holes in it,
or sometimes its a different assembly
depending on the make and manufacture,
that will help control that and how much fluid will pump
forward and backward to essentially
alleviate increase, or decrease the amount of pressure
and the amount of strength required to move
the actual spring or to move the suspension component
as a whole.
Now every suspension component is different,
so don't be in the comments talking about,
well mine does this, or mine does that.
Theres so many different ways that coilovers
are made but really,
if you're thinking that yours does things one way,
there's probably about 20 other brands out there
that do it differently.
Because at the end of the day the simple way to put this
in here is that the movements get controlled within
either the spring or the shock body,
and gets controlled with a bunch of other really small
things.
We're talking about your rebar,
we're talking about your compression,
and things like that.
That ultimately increase or decrease ride quality
depending on the responsiveness
that you want from your coilovers.
Wow, that is a lot of really fancy words to say.
All this stuff in here helps increase or decrease
your ride quality,
depending on if you just wanna slam your car to the ground,
or if you want something that has
a little bit of track function.
So coilovers now a days are typically offered in
two different configurations.
You have your monotube, and then you have your twin tube.
And that's an argument in and of itself.
There's two different types.
People argue that one is better than the other,
but we're pretty much just gonna give you
the basic rundown of the differences between the two.
So the first one is a monotube.
Now monotube shocks have a piston and rod assembly,
and it's pretty much just housed in the damping case.
So it's housed just singularly in one piece.
So you don't have that second reservoir
or anything like that.
It's usually relatively what most
entry to mid level coilovers will sit at,
is a monotube assembly.
Now, you also have a twin tube,
which is essentially just a twin tube shock
that has two cylinders.
One in an inner cylinder where the piston and
shaft move up and down,
while the outer cylinder is the hydraulic fluid reservoir,
and that's the fancier one that's usually
the one that's more expensive.
You're gonna see that on the KWV3s,
you're gonna see that on a whole bunch
of different suspension,
if you really want to pay a lot of money.
Maybe you want to put some Motons, or something like that.
You're just feeling frisky
and you really wanna win that HPD event,
you're likely looking at more twin tube applications.
Plus twin tube shocks allow for increased piston stroke,
which helps with ride quality and handling,
and it's a whole bunch of fancy ways just to say
that it does a little bit more.
But in terms of the quality of a coilovers are
due over time is pretty simple.
If you get coilovers,
you're gonna see your responsiveness do this.
Now when you look at monotube to twin tube,
you're probably going to see this.
And the difference between the two is going to be very
minuscule unless you're really diving into the
intricacies of coilovers.
Because these are probably one of the coolest,
niftyest tools that you can have for your car.
And definitely something I would recommend for anybody
that's looking to modify their car.
The coilovers are just such a great way to go.
Now air suspension is out there,
that's a very cool system, it works great.
But ultimately, if you're looking to dive into coilovers
and something like that, these are just such a nifty tool
to just get the job done.
And depending on how much you pay,
is ultimately gonna determine how fancy
these things really are.
Now you might be thinking that we're skimming over
a couple of things or you really want us to talk about
twin tube coilover assemblys,
but I can almost promise you that there's
not a lot of people out there watching this
that are running a twin tube assembly,
and if there are I'm sure you'll let me know
in the comments section because you guys do anyway,
even if we want you to or not.
Because you guys like to talk to us,
and that's super cool, and we appreciate it.
If you made it this far, just be sure to subscribe
and check out www.fitmentindustries.com,
that's the, whatever.
We're moving forward.
So, if you're looking to set up your coilovers
and you want some tips,
just remember that before you install them,
each spring needs to be slightly and equally preloaded.
Don't let them just float around wily nilly before
you throw them in, that just not the way you want to do it.
After that, thread the lower shock mounts onto
their body in equal amounts.
You want to make sure that when
you're actually installing these,
that they're at equal amounts.
You can just use a tape measure and it's gonna work great.
It doesn't have to be perfect,
but get it as close as you can.
And then of course that you're just installing it correctly
with the appropriate torque specs.
You want to make sure that things
are just assembled correctly.
This is what connects what you feel to the road,
and if you cheap out,
or if you go the easy way out
and you don't install it correctly,
you're gonna feel it pretty much immediately
because its going to be a terrible ride quality.
And the biggest two things to remember is that
if you want to lower your car,
you do it by lowering and using the lower shock mounts.
Don't use the actual preload springs to achieve that
lower ride height unless the lower mounts
are completely maxed out.
Now there are people in the comments section last time
that were like, no you can, no you can't.
And in our eyes, it's not that you can or can't,
its that you shouldn't.
This is the whole point of having a full body coilover
that has an adjustable lower mount.
You want to use this first before you even
start playing around with this, and even then,
we recommend that you probably don't do that.
There are certain companies like Silvers that offer
what are called, ultra low,
that will actually get you a much lower look,
if that's what you're looking for,
so that you can have a slammed car or something like that.
And then you're not messing with preload
or anything in between.
If you guys are wondering why coilovers are such a big deal,
I hope that we've covered it by now,
because coilovers have a cool history
with the racing heritage.
They have awesome, sort of technology that's allowed them
to become way more affordable.
You can pick up a set of Tein for $400.
You can pick up a set of quality Silvers for like $1100.
You can pick up anything in any price range now,
and everything about these coils are just absolutely killer.
And if you guys really want to understand how these work,
you gotta start with the basic.
And you just gotta start by buying them.
And installing them correctly and then just seeing
what it feels like.
If you guys haven't had a set of coilovers yet, come on.
Lets be real.
So that is what we're talking about.
Last talk about coilovers.
If you guys enjoyed this video please,
don't forget to subscribe and of course,
check out www.fitmentindustries.com if you're looking
to pick up some coilover suspension.
Maybe you're looking to pick up some Silvers,
or anything in between.
And you know, drop a comment if you guys have questions.
That's what we love about making these videos, I mean,
It's just Giles and I out here trying to make some content.
So if you guys want to see something different,
let us know in the comment section.
This was from one of our subscribers.
So we hope you guys enjoyed,
I'm Alex from Fitment Industries.
If you're gonna be at SEEMA,
we will be there Tuesday, 4pm.
We're going to be having a meet and greet
at the Acura booth.
We'll actually probably drop a video talking about that.
But I'm Alex from Fitment Industries.
Come out and meet us, and say hi,
for the two people that want to.
I'm Alex, we'll see you later.
Peace.