this is probably a crazy idea but I'll throw it our there anyways...I recently put in a set of coilovers which ride great as long as the road is smooth. But, when the road gets worse, my driving experience with the FD worsens, too. In an effort to make my ride more compliant and less jarring, I was thinking of buying a 1/4"' piece of rubber and placing it between the top camber plate and fender. My coilovers are the pillowball design. Based on the design of the suspension with the pillowball coilover, do you see any additional benefit to something like this..?

 

I think your talking about a dampening barrier or an isolation barrier.

A stopper would be something that stops movement or acts as a
barrier to the stroke of the strut.

Look into leather as a dampner, it won't tear away over time like dimmer might.

I plan on using leather washers to isolate vibration between the ducking work and whatever I'm mounting it to.

 

Your FD has camber plates???

 

no camber plate..just couldn't think of what else to call it...I guess you could say it's a camber plate with no camber adjust

 

Its normally referred to as an upper shock mount

 

I think what you mean is pillowball mount... If you look at all non-pillowball mounts two examples are the Tein CS they have rubber between the spring and top hat, then a rubber bushing inplace of the pillowball, and rubber oring groove on the top side. The Pettit Trak Pro seems to be the same but no oring. In both cases you are isolating the springs from the chassis, but not sure on the damper rod, am sure it is as well.

 

Can you explain the benefits and drawbacks of each - the pillowball, the OEM upper spring mount setup, and the non-pillowball mount..?

 

Well I can give you basics.

Pillow ***** (rod end/spherical bearing) are used in racing applications all metal on metal, precision machined, you want the tightest closet tolerance in racing. Down side is they will produce noise, vibration, harshness on the street.

On the other end of spectrum is getting coilovers that retain the factory upper mounts, these are designed for street use, some examples are the Tein Basic and Superstreet, or in the case of a number of other cars KW Variant models. They reduce the noise, vibration, and harshness because they require the use of the factory mounts like Tein, and you can get some benefits from the coilovers, ie adjustable ride height, spring rates, and dampening, and you are closet to factory NVH.

Then you have the mid-level coilover typle with hardened rubber upper mounts. The best example is the Pettit trackpro or tein cs (although they do not make the cs for our cars). You still have all the feature and functions of coilovers, but you can take them out of the box, bolt them, no reusing of OEM parts. Being a harder rubber they will give you a tighter feel with alittle extra NVH.

 

THREAD REVIVAL!

Is anyone aware of a rubber insulator for the pillowball mounts to elimiate the metal to metal contact?

I contacted TEIN USA and they do not offer any such part, they also said the OEM upper mounts do not fit the Flex model I have.

 

Why do you want to eliminate metal to metal? If the shock is decent you will have decent ride quality and the shocks will respond appropriately.

 

2 ideas:
1. Ground Control has such a thing for the upper mounts in their coil over kit for the FD. It's basically a 1/4" thick poly bushing of sorts that works to position a 2.5" coil over spring on the upper shock mount. Ask nicely if they can sell you one. They probably use that part in multiple kits but here is the one for the FD.
https://groundcontrolstore.com/colle...suspension-kit
2. Fat Cat Motorsports bushings has a similar part they use for the same purpose. Ask nicely if they can sell you that part
https://5xracing.com/i-20945819-5x-r...tegory:1231717

 

You can do it, but as someone said to me, that first 1/4" of movement is what you're paying for with a good shock, why throw it away with a $2 piece of rubber?

 

Well yeah, but he got Tein Flex so its also possible the 1/4" of rubber could have better damping characteristics over that 1st 1/4" of suspension travel...

 

I think you’re overstating how much a pillow ball upper mount will effect NVH. If you have excessive NVH you probably just have lower quality suspension. Get a quality coilover like Ohlins (pillowball upper mounts BTW) and they’ll ride much better without a lot of NVH. The only NVH increase I saw was when I installed the SBG floating top hats. The only reason I saw an increase is because the floating top hats do not have rubber spring isolators so with the windows down, I can hear some spring noise occasionally on bigger bumps, but never anything to complain about. Especially with the windows up.

matt

 

I drove the off the shelf Ohlins on a rough road including some expansion joints. They transmit quite a bit of shock especially on expansion joints. Moreso than my car running the Ground Control setup with Konis. We did a back to back comparo on that road. I can definitely understand someone wanted to decrease that type of shock and noise with some softer than metal material between the spring and mount.

 

Interesting. I find the Ohlins DFV to be comparable to eibach/stock shocks for abrupt changes in the road surface. I have felt more force transmitted through the chassis, but not what I would call vibration or shock. They definitely act and feel stiffer on slowly undulating surfaces, but that is by design because those are low speed movements in the heavily damped velocity range. What stiffness did you have them set to?