ive got the power i want out of my EK but my suspension is stock and i have no clue about suspensions. my question is this: how do i get my car off the line fast but also handle smoothely in minnesota's curvey roads?

im lookng to spend around $500. is that too little, too much? i dunno. i can build my motor and turbo it but im a noob when it comes to suspension stuff.

 

500 is a little low, if your want to go drag racing your gona want some pretty stiff springs, to handle weight transfer, you want to keep all you can up front, which is exactly the oppisate of what you want on crappy roads, pretty soft so it can obsorbe the bumbs without bouncing.

If i were you i'd go with some ajusible shocks (koni yellows are some of the best, but i am very pleased with my tokico illumnias) and a ground control coilover sleeve. With these you can ajust both the damping, and the ride hight-stiffness, so when you are normally driving have it be soft, set it low and hard for races. Konis would run you about 550 and the GC coilover sleeves will go for about 250. So 800 would be a good starting point.

And dont forget tires. All the suspension does is keep the tires on the ground, if you have cheap tires it really does not matter how good the other componets are. Get good sticky ones and your launches will improve drasticly, along with some light weight racing rims, it'll shave a lttle off your time. You can get some light rims and sticky tires for about 700, at least i did, if you shop around.

The last part to a basic suspension is bars, lots of them, while this wont help you on a drag race they are relitivly cheap and do wonders for chassis stiffining. Strut and tie bars stiffen the chassis. Ebay bars work fine for this, i got front and rear, lower and higher, for 70 shipped, not bad. In addition to this your gona wana get some sway bars, bigger rear = oversteer. They compress the spring somewhat evenly on both sides, keeping your tires flat on the road. I run a little bit bigger on the back for autocrossing, if you just run this on the street, or full track, i'd say stay a little bigger up front.

Thats just a very basic overview of suspension, there is bushings, locks, more bars, all kinds of things to mess with. But be careful alot of people will screw over their suspension cause they just go for ajustments without knowing what they are doing.

 

doesn't look like you have lsd. If that's the case I would get that first. After that somethng to keep the front end from hoping.

 

For something that seems so simple, you will find that there is a LOT to learn. Not all of the products being sold right now are really worth a dam. My best advice is to figure out what you would like first, and then research that part on H-T with the search feature. It can be hard though, because when a NEW part comes out with a great price, a lot of people praise it befor actually using or testing it against the already tried & true parts ***[COUGH]Omni Power[/COUGH]***.

I can tell you that you can't go wrong with the Koni/Ground Control setup. It is the best combo available for the price & both come with life time warranties (koni is good as long as it's not a race car). The ground control coilovers can be ordered with any spring rates. If your not sure which rates you want, just call em & tell them what your going to use the car for. If you are going to go with koni/GC shocks & coils, you NEED to get koni specific coil over sleeves from Ground Control (see THIS thread for an explination why).

Sway bars don't help for drag racing, only handeling.
Chassis reinforcment helps the suspension do it's job much easier.
Sticky tires & light weight wheels make a big difference (no blinging 17-18s).