- The age old question argument
on every single car Facebook group or forum.
The thing that divides friends groups, friends groups,
or friend groups air suspension versus coilovers.
(upbeat music)
Many moons ago back in 2018, Alex, with his weird comb-over
and different colored hair, covered this question already,
but I wanted to do an update on it
and talk a little bit about my experiences with it too.
I've had the pleasure of dabbling
with many different coilover setups
and running air suspension on multiple vehicles.
So, the main problem here is I can't tell you exactly
what you want, that's up to you.
But I'll do you a solid and give you enough knowledge
that you can confidently make the decision
without just blasting rude comments on posts
saying your cousin's brother's girlfriend's husband
had a bag and it popped, so air suspension is trash.
Of course, if you need anything suspense related,
you already know to head on over to fitmentindustries.com
and we made it real easy for you
by putting the links directly to coilovers
and air suspension in the description, let's get into it.
So coilovers, let's get into the basics.
A lot of people pick up a set to lower their car
to achieve better fitment, to transform the look
of their car, you know,
get rid of that monster truck wheel gap.
But coilovers are designed
to do so much more than just that.
A lot of times air suspension gets flack
for how expensive it is not realizing how many sets
of coilovers are out there that are actually more expensive
than a set of 3P air suspension from Airlift.
But this is for good reason.
There is a lot more that goes down than just your car.
With coilovers, you get the ability to adjust ring rates,
compression, rebound, damping,
and more to literally dial your car in
to do exactly what you need it to.
This isn't just for hard parking at shows.
This is for launching your car at the drag strip,
it's for being able to take that corner
at auto cross just a little bit faster.
It's about taking your drift car and being able
to do a reverse entry at 120 miles per hour.
Okay take it easy, bud.
What I'm getting at is the world
of coilovers is so damn big.
If you look at BC racing, you're going to see everything
from their BR line of coilovers that starts around $1100
to five other lineups going all the way to the ZR,
which starts at around 2,800.
Now each part of the lineup is going
to serve a specific purpose and give you more adjustability
as you move up the ladder.
This is going to be for most big suspension brands
like Fortune Auto, KW, ST, et cetera.
The biggest benefit of coilovers is having all
of these options and it being reliable for us.
You install the coilovers and it's generally pretty simple.
Anyone and their buddies can do it in a day.
Okay well not anyone, I've seen some of you and your buddies
and you all need to stay away from power tools
and stop making Tik Toks shooting off the top hats
on your stock struts because I have a panic attack
every single time I see that (bleep).
What I'm trying to get at here is once they're in the car
and your alignment's done, you're good to go, that's it.
Coilovers aren't going to pop.
If you have a fuse go out,
it's not going to be the end of the world.
And you don't have to think about your lines freezing.
And it's just overall less maintenance
than a typical air suspension setup.
And for everyone that is just looking to dump their car
on the ground, you can get into a set of coilovers cheaper
than getting into air suspension.
Also, there's this huge controversy of how static cars
are better because it's harder to achieve tight fitment
at your ride height and drive it how you park it,
even though every super low car on coilovers that I see
disassembles their car and puts their bumper
in the back seat to drive anywhere farther
than an hour away, but to each their own.
If you're looking at getting your first set of coilovers
or even upgrading to some solid ones,
I'll give you a couple of my personal recommendations.
Fortune Auto five hundreds are great coilovers
that are slightly more expensive starting around $1500
but have been my personal favorite,
and I've ran on three different cars over the years.
They have a huge range of adjustability to lower your car,
adjustable camera plates on top and adjustable damping.
The ride quality has felt amazing
even with my car like an inch off the ground,
each of these coilovers are hand-built
and are completely rebuildable so you can use them
for years and years.
Another great coilover that I talked about earlier
is the BCBR series coilover.
This is BCs entry-level coilover, but it's going
to be perfect for anyone that daily drives their car
or does some spirited driving on the weekends.
These are also going to have tambour place,
adjustable damping, which is great.
And on both of these coilovers, you're also going
to get the option to upgrade the swift springs
for an extra $300, but hear me out,
every single person I've talked to
that has done Swiss spring upgrades swears by it.
If you don't know what swift springs are,
they were founded in Tokyo back in 1997,
which is the same year Mike Tyson bit that dude's ear off.
Anyway, swiss springs are made of a super strong alloy
that allows them to use a thinner diameter of wire.
There's two benefits of that.
The spring itself is way lighter,
and it also makes a bigger gap between the coils,
which allows for a bigger stroke in the spring,
which means it doesn't bottom out as fast as coils
that use that thicker diameter wire spring.
Also by using this alloy,
it makes the springs last way longer in general,
after a year of racing on these springs,
they reported that they are typically within a half to 1%
of the rate they were when they came out of the box.
So that's a quick crash course on coilovers,
but we still need to talk a little bit about air suspension.
Back in the day I was that static dude.
Bags are for groceries and I will never go air,
until I went air, I ran it in two of my cars and I was sold.
This (bleep) is so damn convenient.
Speed bump, just air up.
(bleep) driveway that for some reason
has a 85 degree angle, air up, filling up with gas, air out,
air out everywhere, no matter what, it doesn't matter, okay?
So it's gonna be five seconds you'd get out of the car,
you air out, you air out for the peasants.
That's what you do with air.
Now, there is a lot of misconceptions about air suspension,
and we have made some videos covering that,
so you can go check those out for more detail,
but I'll still touch on a few here.
Air install really isn't that bad.
Again, a few buddies in the garage is all it takes.
If you've installed coilovers
and you've installed an aftermarket radio,
you can 100% install air suspension.
Even if you haven't,
I believe that you can do it.
Airlift and Accura both include color install books
with lots of pictures, I'm a big picture guy.
Words are overrated, but seriously,
the install guides are extremely helpful and in this day
and age, you have the internet in your pocket.
And any issue you're running into has probably been ran into
by 50 other people, and you can find an answer.
Now just because install isn't that bad
doesn't mean you should whip through it.
Install is everything for air suspension,
it is going to be the reason why you either love it
or absolutely hate it in the long run.
Make sure your lines are ran correctly.
No pinches, not rubbing on anything.
Make sure you use lots of plumbers tape with your fittings
and double check by spraying all of them with soapy water
to see if you have any leaks.
Anyways, moving forward, air can be ran in winter.
I'm not sure who made this rumor
or why half the car scene thinks this,
but with a little bit of maintenance,
which includes putting air brake anti-freeze in your tank
and airing out a couple of times to cycle it,
and having a water trap in your system,
you will be perfectly fine.
Semi trucks run air suspension,
ambulances run air suspension.
I promise you won't have an issue
if you do everything right the first time.
The last thing I want to touch on from this
is that you can't drive hard on air.
I beat the absolute piss out of my ST while it was on air
and drove no differently than when I had coilovers on it.
There's still plenty of adjustability with air.
And it's even right at your fingertips.
Putting a few more PSI in your bags is going
to stiffen them up and also raise your car.
Once there, beat the hell out of it, you're good.
Airlift company has been around since 1949
and knows exactly how to make a durable bag for your car.
It can handle what you give it.
Now to touch on a few of the cons, price,
in my personal opinion, I wouldn't go in piece
by piece by air suspension.
And it just makes way more sense to buy a kit that will come
with everything you need.
And that's gonna start right around $3,200.
This is a lot of cash.
Now there is options that we offer,
like as low as 0% financing on fitment industries.
So you can make payments instead of just dropping that much
on the spot.
So that works around it a little bit,
but I totally get that's not everyone's thing either.
Another con is the chance of being stranded.
If you miss something on the installer,
realize you're running the wrong size wheel
and it's rubbing on the bag and the bag pops
or a line ruptures, you're stuck on the side of the road.
That's why I can't stress enough
how important the install is.
That's basically it, air rides really nice
when you have it dialed in correctly,
it can be driven hard and you don't need
to destroy your car while driving it.
Some brands to look at here are Airlift Performance,
Accuair, and Universal Air.
Airlift is definitely the most common,
but they don't make kits for every single car.
So what's nice is if you have a unique vehicle, is you can,
for example, run Accura management and airlift struts,
or you could run Airlift management and Universal struts.
They can be interchangeable to get what you need.
To sum it up, there's nothing quite like a car
that's completely aired out under the lip
and just achieve that perfect look.
Also, if you're going to do this,
please make sure that your car looks good aired up,
not just aired out.
Now to combine all of this, I'll touch on one more thing,
because I get questioned on it all the time.
Fortune Auto does actually make air cups.
So these combine coilovers with air suspension.
It's just a little unique.
Now these aren't made to be driven aired up,
they're made so you can air up to get in a driveway
or get in a trailer and then air back out.
And you're riding on coilovers.
You still run lines and have a tank,
but if something were to happen,
you're still technically on coilovers
and that's how you drive anyways.
So it gives you that reliable factor.
These are going to be about the same price
as an air suspension kit,
so you're not really gonna save any money by doing this,
but it's a cool feature.
You want to learn more?
I got to talk to Terry from Fortune Auto about these
at SEMA, and you can check that out.
All right, so what are you picking?
Did you decide?
Comment below, but say why.
I'm gonna read every single comment,
because that gets me all riled up.
I've ran both and I love both for its own reasons,
but don't forget if you need anything we talked about.
You can hit the links in the description because over here
at Fitment Industries, we specialize in wheels, tires,
and of course, suspension, see you later.