I always use fortune auto and best thing about them is you can buy the standard 500 series and just upgrade them to the full race 510 series instead of having to purchase a whole new set

 

For the Street , and Street only, especially if you only have $1,000 to spend, I would go with a good shock/spring combo, You'll get way more bang for your buck at that cost point, and the road manners and handling will be 10000000 times better then any coilover you'll probably get for $1,000 or less... Unless you find a crazy deal on like Ohlins or Penske's or something, and even then Ohlins still won't have the road manners of a good Spring/Shock combo because you lose alot of the bump insulation and travel that standard shocks and struts offer.

I have Racing Beat Springs, and Koni Adjustable on my 04.. I replaced my Tein Flex Z's with them because they were absolutely one of the worst coilovers I've ever had on a car despite them being highly recommended on this platform at the time for a street car with occasional track use and alot of spirited driving ( If you've ever driven a truck with a GVWR in excess of 10,000lbs with nothing for weight in it, like a Ford F450, or Chevy 3500HD thats alot how they rode.)

.... I frequently do long drives with my RX-8, rarely do I find the Koni/RB Spring combo to be too firm or uncomfortable. The handling feels much more like a well setup car with firmer suspension from the factory then some Rattlebox on over sprung, over dampened coilovers with zero travel like 99.9% of coilovers out there will make your car feel..

 

Over the years, the FD guys have come to the conclusion that 25" from the ground to the wheel arch is "best" for the FD as far as handling goes. Is there a similar measurement for the RX-8? Or are you guys just dropping it to your liking?

 

Usually ride height is measured from the center of the wheel to the arch, since those points are independent of wheel size/tire outer diameter.
But, anyway, 13" center to wheel arch is generally "good" (so about 1.25" drop off the average stock height). You don't really want to get into 12"s, there's nothing to be gained and more scraping.

 

I just installed Blitz ZZ-R coilovers in early august. Got them for an excellent price from RHDJapan.com, replaced all my camber/toe/caster eccentric bolts at the same time banged out an alignment and man this car performs beautifully now, even took it on an 1800Km road trip through the Rocky mountain to break them in and get settled.

25" fender to ground at all 4 corners, just needs some new wheels with better offset and it will be dialed in perfect.

 

Looked at those Blitz coilovers a while ago however I could not find a single review from an RX8 owner that went with them. So it was unknown if any different or better than the regular BC style common setup. The WRX guys seemed to rate them though.
What are the street manners like on these Blitz coilovers? Also adjustability as far as noticeable changes in damping? Be great if you could outline any issues you might have come across also.
Pretty sure these were same price as BC around here anyway. Cheers.

 

I just finished installing a set of Bilnax single adjustable coilovers from Shaftworks. I had Ohlins on my 2005 GT and although I really liked them I wanted something a little more stiffly sprung this time around. Shaftworks builds them to order so I was able to get exactly the spring rate I was looking for (12k/9k F/R) and have the dampers valved to match. The only down side was lead time. They were competitive price wise with off the shelf Ohlins. Overall I am happy so far. I don't think these will go as low as many of the other options, but I am not looking to slam the car. For now I have the car sitting just under 14" to the fender lip. I took a short drive so not much in the way of driving impressions to pass along at this point. I will be autoscoring the car so I made my choices with that in mind. A few pictures. The first was posted by Shaftworks before they shipped. The next two are a little closer up.

Everything feels well made. The set comes with adjusters and spanner wrenches. One small downside is that there were no remote adjusters provided for the rear dampers.

 

Same, found zero reviews on an RX-8, but a few from subbie, Nissan Z/S cars and even a Prius owner that had zero complaints.

I was going to get theBlitz Spec-C version with the external reservoir and 10k/7k springs but they went discontinued and i was probably aiming a little high with my driving usage. Somewhat glad i went for the 8/6K springs anyway. They might be the same as BCs with different paint, but since they were part of a large order and my friend bought 5K$ worth of stuff for his S15 we saved a fair bit and they were 200-300$ less than BCs from a canadian supplier, and I get that sweet JDM brand sticker to show off lol.

Performance is awesome, i left them set pretty soft for a road trip to get settled in, twisty mountain switchbacks were a complete blast, could push it so hard. I've dialed them up to about 70-80% stiff setting and it's about perfect for a weekend/evening hard drives now.

Will report with a long term opinion after a bit more road time.

 

Great info, thank~!

 

I am running ohlins DFV with 10.7K front and 6K rear spring rates. I think leaving the stock rear sway bar and redrilling the front OEM sway bar yields pretty good results and good balance. I am also running -2.5 degree camber front and -2.2 rear. I had to get the offset whiteline bushings for the front upper control arms to get the camber to this amount. I really like this set up A LOT.

 

The Ohlins is also offered as a stiffer race setup with 13Kg front 8Kg rear

compared to the standard Ohlins street & track 8Kg front 5Kg rear setup

 

Ohlins, or our Long Stroke Custom FPSpec Ohlins... *The Choice*, but not the cheapest. And... one week left before the price hike goes into effect for 2024 (February 1) ! www.sakebombgarage.com/rx8/suspension/

 

Series 2 (Series II) ride height for the regular/standard suspension are:

 

Hello guys!
I like to change the oem coilovers after 14years/145'000km of use to Bilstein B16 or TEIN Flex Z with active EDFC.
I could read a lot about the Bilsteins in this forum, but not that much about the TEIN. Especially with the active EDFC. Also when I search on youtube, 90% of the videos are promo videos from TEIN. But before I spend a lot of money on the active EDFC, I would like to hear some meanings and experiences from other drivers.

I use the car for street driving and track days (1-2 times a year).

Does someone have experience with the TEIN Flex Z with EDFC active pro/ EDFC5?
Knows someone how the Bilsteins and TEIN are in comparsion?

Edit: I live in Switzerland and the installation will be checked at a vehicle inspection office and the coilovers will be listed with all details in the vehicle registration document. So it's not possible to play around with different springs.

BR,
Martin

 

Or skip the Flex Z and go for the Mono Sport? What's about the ride with the mono sport? the springs are a lot stiffer then stock I assume.

 

I don't have first-hand experience with either, but from previous threads here, EDFC can be problematic because there isn't really a vehicle speed sensor on a manual RX-8. It's determined from vehicle speed, so while it's theoretically possible to make work, you're going to need to engineer your own VSS signal.

If you're shopping at those prices, a MUCH better option is Ohlins. But I would question whether you need all the adjustability and gimmicks. Bilstein B14/PSS are less expensive cheaper, and a well tuned kit for the car, without damper adjustability, only height. IMO adjustability leads to more problems than it solves unless you're dialing the suspension in for each track and consistently doing time trials to validate the results. It's very easy to adjust yourself into a slower lap time

 

I would like to change the settings between street and track use. I hope, with the edfc5 or edfc active pro initially set, the system chooses the correct settings for the current case itself for each damper. to get the speed signal, you can by the gps adapter from tein.
I got prices for tein flex z (1515$), tein mono sport (1810$), Bilstein B14 (2070$) and Bistein B16 (2535$). EDFC5 shipped from japan would be about 650$. therefore tein mono sport incl. edfc5 would be a bit cheaper but about the same as B16. For the Öhlins I don't have a quote.

at the moment, I'm between B16 and Mono Sport with EDFC5. Not finally decided.

 

I'm also in that same camp between PSS(B14) vs Tein Mono Sport. They're roughly the same price, but the fact that the PSS haven't been updated and seem to be EOL based on current availability, whereas the Mono Sports are relatively newer and if needed rebuildable by their US location is definitely appealing.

 

After reading through some posts in this forum about the Bilsteins and Öhlins, I go with the Teins.
About the Öhlins, I've read some comments about oversteer, problems to choose the best sway bar combinations and some thinkings about modify the coilovers.
About the Bilsteins I also found posts about changing the springs and modifications of the coilovers.
What I remember, mostly the changes of the springs go to harder ones.
For all coilovers is the problem, that they are designed to fit on old and standard RX8s but not for the R3 with it's different rear suspension. So the minimum lowering in the R3 is higher then on the other models. Means that the R3 will be lower at the maximum height in compare with the other RX-8 models.

The mono sports has higher spring rates in compare with the others and the height adjustment is independent of the spring pretension and it looks like that I can have the same ride height as stock. In my case, I don't like to go much lower than standard, otherwise I could have problems with scratching at some places.

EDFC might be a problem in Switzerland to use it street legal. But that's another topic.