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| Watching Khiem struggle for hours on his suspension install was a huge source of amusement for Jeff who was too busy taking pictures to help. |
Initial impression? WOW. The combination of the Bridgestone Potenza RE-11s with the KW Clubsports makes for a heck of a lot of cornering grip and it actually rides better than stock! Part of the ride improvement is attributed to the RE-11s that don’t have the sharp impact harshness of the stock RE050 tires. The rest of the improvement can be attributed to the superior damping characteristics of the KWs. They just soak up the bumps without upsetting the chassis, showing great body motion control. There’s one particular stretch of the 405 between LAX and Culver City that is particularly bumpy; every concrete slap caused the car on the stock suspension to bounce. However, with the KWs, it rides almost like a Lexus.
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| All in place, the Clubsports and Whiteline bar grace the front. |
The transient response, such as in a quick left-right maneuver is also greatly improved; more than double the stock spring rates will have this effect! Whereas there was significant body roll and some sluggishness in transient response on the stock setup in slalom, both of these have been greatly reduced.
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| The rear Clubsports. |
The cornering speed is so great now; it’s not safe at all to explore the limits on the street. My previous car was a 2005 Evo that is no slouch when it comes to cornering; I had Potenza RE-01Rs (245/40/17, same size as the S2000), rear trailing arm bushings, rear bump steer correction, and front camber plates. I ran -3.0 degrees camber on the front, and -1.5 on the rear. The S2000 on the current setup feels like I’m only pushing ~80% where the Evo was at the limit. So far, the balance feels quite neutral. I’m glad I took off the rear bar as I imagine keeping it would have created oversteer. I can’t wait to track this thing to get a better feel for the balance and ultimate grip of this setup!
In case you didn’t pick up on this, your suspension setup, tire/wheel setup, and alignment all need to complement each other. If they are mismatched, you’ll have a very poor handling vehicle. With a bit of research however, you can end up with a great setup like this!
Stay tuned, we have stuff coming to improve our chassis stiffness, more suspension tweaks and stuff to improve the cars stopping coming up.
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