Sup guys, I still have the factory coils overs or springs that comes with the car and I'm tired of hearing that "thunk" every time I hit a bump. I've done some research on specific brands I'm looking into on Andy's auto sport etc but does any one with a 1.75 frnt 1.5 rear drop have a pic I could look at? I just want to see how it looks so I can make my decision.

Read the first few pages of this thread and find a spring you like then Google/search.

Am I missing something?

I replaced the springs & dampers on my RX8 Touring (which I believe had a sportier stock suspension) with Tien S-Techs & Koni Yellows in order to lower the car. The suspension felt MUCH softer than stock!!! and bottomed often. As time went on... it bottomed more & more. I figured the springs sucked & sagged already (it's only been about 1 year!). I purchased Eibach springs to replace them. When I disassembled the rear... I noticed the bump stops have disintegrated! I put it together with the Eibachs and NO BUMP STOPS since I couldn't re-use what's there. It rides on the bottom at all times. Running over a cricket makes the back-end go THUD! There might as well not even be springs on the car because they are not even being used. THIS CAN'T BE RIGHT!!!

So my questions to someone with more knowledge than myself is... What's wrong with this picture? I chose the Koni Yellows because they are supposedly "made for lowering springs" and I've installed two different brands of springs... both of which offered NO SUPPORT from the springs whatsoever. Is the Touring model with the stock sport suspension different from the non-sport suspension models & needs longer springs/dampers? Are the supports on the Koni Yellows welded on lower than the stock dampers & actually intended to lower the car with stock springs? What good is lowering the car if the springs are no longer even being utilized?! What am I missing here?

koni yellows and s techs are what i run and ive installed a few of these. the rear shocks can only be adjusted with the springs off and the bump stops need to be cut down when installed. if you didnt cut them maybe thats why they got destroyed

koni yellows & tien or eibach bottom out BAD!!!
 

I appreciate the feedback but I did cut the bump stops in half as directed... but they seemed to get destroyed because the car was riding on them instead of being supported by the springs. The rear Koni adjustment is just for firmness, right? That's where you remove them... put the end in a vice, push them all the way in, and turn them in all the way then out up to two full turns. I believe I did everything right. Really not sure how I could have done anything wrong. Springs are not supporting the car in the rear at all though.

There are no bump stops in the rear currently... but it still shouldn't go thud on every 1/4 inch crack in the road... I'm pretty sure of that.

Wouldn't Mazda Speed suspension eliminate all thus guess work?
My 2 cents.

Yeah... I'm assume it would... but then again purchasing a spring & damper combination that others have used successfully should reduce the guess work too. I'm stumped as to why it is bottoming out on 1/2 inch pavement changes while people like 200.mph are running the same setup AND has setup others with the same tein/koni combination.

A little history... I have a 2004 RX8 Touring model. The main reason & swapped the springs/dampers to begin with is because the stock setup started bottoming. As long as I was doing it... figured I'd lower at the same time.

Can anyone think of a reason that it would have started bottoming to begin with & why my Tein/Koni and most recently Eibach/Koni combos both are riding with the springs completely compressed & riding bottomed out all the time?

I'd like to identify the problem before throwing more money at it. I just swapped out the Tein's for Eibach's thinking I got bad or fake Tein's. I got the new Eibach's from TH Motorsports, which I believe to be a reputable online retailer.

If you have changed everything out several times and it is still doing it that would leave me to believe its a fundamental issues with the install processes. I would start by re-setting your suspension pre-load. If you dont know what that is search. I have also saw this issue pop up when the dampeners are no longer functional.

In the past I have had mostly bad luck with TH Motorsports and the only reason I would ever order from them no longer works for THM.

Has anyone tested the Eibach, H&R, or Tein S-techs to verify the rates? Seeing how many of the springs have come up softer than their claims, it'd be nice to know for sure what the rates are.

I had my Eibach Pro-Kit springs tested several years ago when I was experiencing unexpected results, and they were within 5% of their specification. In my case, my problems were due to differences between S1 and S2 suspensions.