Topic: Wondering what to do!

[crisco]

The bug has hit me, and all it took was replacing my cup holder with the Santana Interior's cup holder and buying the Fuse box cover!
Now I am looking to purchase the brace bundle from DDM. I was wondering would replacing the sway bars be too much all at once at the same time, or would I even need to, or would that just enhance my ride.
Just wondering.
You all were right, when it hits... it hits!

[hammy221]

I have the shock tower brace the tunnel brace and the rear brace and for me it made. Huge difference if it were me I would of gotten the sway bars too at the same time but I've never driven the sol with them but in not sure how much they help

[2kwk4u]

Two schools of thought on this one. 

1)  Do the mods individually and drive for awhile after each.  That way you have a feel for the difference each individual mod does/did.

2)  Do them all at once so that you don't have to re-learn the way the car handles after each mod.  Might as well throw on some coilovers at the same time... Oh, and don't forget polyurethane bushings for the swaybars... and get a good performance alignment after driving it a couple hundred miles so the suspension "settles."

[2kwk4u]

Oh, and some good high-performance summer tires.

Yep, that should do it... for now

[1LILNDN]

#3.  If you have all that done ,now you put a good Tune on it if you haven't already.

[Critterman]

and then ...........................

[ophidia31]

When it comes to suspension stuff, youre going to have the car in the air. So, as long as you have the money to buy it, might as well do the braces and sway bars all at once.  Not sure what kind of car your after, but a word of warning, zok bars (if you were looking on the ddm site) will make the car ride a little rougher.

[crisco]

I am not looking for a harder ride...so I will start with the brace bundle first. I will start here, and then go for the solo shorty exhaust. But that will be later. This is my daily ( ahem economical) ride for the spring, summer and fall. So I do want the ride as smooth as I can, but able to handle the twisties too. I don't race her but I do want as much performance as I can get too.This is the best go-kart that I ever had! Tunes for later date for now. Man...this could never end! Lol Loving every minute of too!
As a side note what would be a good code reader to get.

[1LILNDN]

crisco ;  I have an Actron #CP9580A  It tells you what the code is ,gives you all data, you can download to computer ,print out and a whole lot more .

[2kwk4u]

As mentioned, any suspension mod you do for performance is going to alter the ride as well.  You'll have to decide how harsh of a ride you're willing to live with knowing that the tradeoff is better performance.  Even changing "just the tires" for performance tires can make an unacceptable (to some) difference because performance tires will have stiffer sidewalls as well as more grippy rubber and performance-specific tread patterns.  That being said, tires are often considered the easiest and most noticeable performance upgrade.  Your acceleration (reduced wheelspin), cornering and braking thresholds will all improve by going to performance tires.

The purpose of the brace bundle is to stiffen the chassis and reduce flex so that the parts of the suspension that are intended to articulate are the only parts of the car that do so.  A stiffer chassis will transmit more "road feel" to you through the steering wheel, pedals and seat.  From a strictly performance standpoint, that's a good thing. 

Stiffer swaybars will keep your cornering flatter, make transitions (right-to-left and vice versa) less dramatic, and get your car into a "set" quicker on turn-in.  In doing all of this, they are limiting suspension movement - to some degree. The bumps in the road are still there, though, and that motion has to go somewhere... so yes, the rest of the car (and by extension the passengers) will absorb more energy as a result.  To a limited degree, you can also tune oversteer/understeer tendencies with swaybar selection.  Many autocrossers prefer to leave the stock front swaybar on a GXP and upgrade only the rear to the GXP Z0K bar.  By stiffening up the rear, you actually give the FRONT tires a little more grip and thus reduce understeer at autocross speeds.  Really, though, the most effective way to affect oversteer/understeer is by playing with spring rates (then fine-tune from there with shock dampening and THEN bars).

Given all of that, I'm one to sacrifice ride quality for performance.  My suspension mod progression has gone as follows (so far):

- Stock 2008 GXP (FE3 suspension, non Z0K) -- drove it like this very briefly when passing through my hometown on a military TDY.  I bought the car while I was overseas and stored it at my father's house.  Prior to this car, I had an '06 that I drove for a few months before finding out I had orders overseas.  I didn't have it long enough to do any suspension mods (at the time all that was available were eibach sport line springs from kappasphere).  The GXP with FE3 suspension handled better than I remembered the N/A handling (which is already pretty decent).  Consequently, the ride was a little less supple.

- DDM Probeam and Race Backbone (now called "performance" backbone").  If memory serves, I bought the backbone shortly before they introduced the 1/2" "extreme" (at the time) backbone.  Had it been available in 1/2" I may have considered it.  The most noticeable difference to me was how these two helped stabilize the car in instances when you hit a rise or dip mid-corner during spirited driving in the twisties.

- Dunlop Direzza Star Spec tires.  Huge difference in wet and dry performance.  The biggest sacrifice here is road noise.  Let's be honest, though, these aren't luxury cars anyway.  There may be better tires out there now.  I probably should start researching this soon, as mine probably have a few thousand miles left on them - but I have another year before I move back to the states again and get the car out of storage for good.

- GXP Z0K swaybars (both front and rear).  See my comments above about the differences swaybars make.

- LVFCB front chassis brace.  I'll admit that I was skeptical about this one, but considering the reviews and how relatively little it cost, I decided to give it a shot.  It really DOES compliment the other two chassis braces well.  Going back to that funny juxtaposition about suspension mods that stiffen one end of the car affecting the other end, this mod seemed to really help "stick" the rear tires on corner exit.

I'm going home in a month for R&R and I'm excited to do a couple more suspension mods while there.  I bought a used set of KW V3 coilovers and 340lb springs for all four corners a few months back.  Those and some polyurethane swaybar bushings will do it for me. 

 With all of this being said, the car IS my daily driver when its not in storage.  But on my daily drive I like to take backroads instead of interstate if it's a nice day and I feel the need to "unwind" on the way home from work.  I'm nearly 40, and I don't find the ride objectionable.  My father (nearly 70) drives it periodically for me while I'm overseas.  It is a bit of a rough ride for him, but in the same breath he always talks about how amazing the car handles.  Usually when he takes it out, he's been going on fun runs with the kappa guys in my hometown.  He has told me more than once that he has taken it around a corner briskly only to see another kappa in the rearview get crossed-up trying to keep up without the same level of suspension mods.

Sorry for the long-winded post.  Hope this helps 

[crisco]

Not long  winded, informative! Thank you very much. I knew that my ride would get a little stiffer with the changes, but you helped me immensely with a direction I want to go. 
As far as tires go I want as quiet as I can get without losing traction in the rain, not that I ride hard in the rain, but I have felt how squirrelly the car gets when you take a left or right from a red light. But that will be taken care of later. Till then I drive carefully in the rain.

But again thank you for the info! 
By the way Thank you for serving for our country!  

[Kelu]

I agree with our military buddy from top.
I have pretty much same suspension mods (KW V3 coilovers, backbone, Z0K bars, lighter wheels, better tires, not installed ProBeam) and sometimes when I just drive around in city it pisses me off the amount of rigidity and our bad roads. But when I take it to a corner I have a smile on my face.

Depends on what you want. If I would have to do only one mod I would do tires.