I've done a search, but I want some suggestions for my particular situation.

2000 Integra GS-R
Stock suspension right now
Daily driver
I do NOT autoX
I live in Chicago where the winters can be relatively bad
I dont have a hard price range, but I do want quality products
I dont want my ride quality to suffer too much

Springs or coilovers?
Which ones?
What else do I need to buy? (shocks/camber/etc)

I dont know much about cars, so try not to get too technical. Thanks in advance, appreciate the help. If there's any other info I should provide, let me know.

-L-

 

You will get the best ride quality out of coils and shocks. I had Pro-Kits and Koni Sports and the ride was good, almost to good. It leans more street then performance.

I personally like the ability to raise and lower the car and set the ride height to where I want it instead of being limited to one height. Tein Basics are very street oriented, no adjustments for dampening, softer spring rates then any other full coilover system (with out custom springs of course). I went with the Skunk2 Pro coilovers, but I have yet to use them since the car is still getting body work, etc. done. So I can't give you an opinion on them just yet. All I can say is that they were reasonably priced for a coilover setup. How I feel they perform is yet to be decided.

 

When youre raising/lowering the car, is it a big hassle? Whats the process?

 

A hassle compared to what? There is more work involved.. It's mainly just jack the car up, loosen the rings with the spanner wrenches.. Set it to the desired height and put the car back on the ground. You don't even have to take the wheels off. You have to make sure that you get it all even, and it's never a bad idea to get an alignment after any suspension adjustment. For me, I'll probably have a summer right height and a winter ride height. Once winter hits, I'll raise it up and get it aligned. Then when spring comes drop it back down and get it aligned again.

As for the camber kit question.. Some debate this, saying that if you have your toe settings set to zero, your camber doesn't matter and you won't wear your tires. I don't completely agree with that logic, though in some cases it maybe true. To much camber means that you have less rubber on the ground, less rubber usually means less traction. I ran for many years without a camber kit in my Civic. I only ran Pro-kits so my drop wasn't but 1.5 inches or so. I was still a little out of spec on my camber. My toe and caster were fine, I still had more wear on the inside of my tires but it wasn't super fast. I could really tell my camber was off in the rain. The front end felt like I was on glass at times. The more drop you have the more negative camber you'll have.

 

If you don't know much about cars, aren't looking to put the car through any serious track use, don't want to spend a lot of money, and are concerned with ride quality, then a good set of lowering springs are probably your best bet.

The only other thing to do would be to get an alignment, and have toe zero'd out, don't worry about the camber. Most lowering springs will probably put you at 1.5* of negative camber at most, which is pretty much nothing, although a bit of negative camber is beneficial to handling. It is the toe that will eat your tires, even the tiniest bit of toe will do it, so get an alignment done.

Don't worry about shocks and camber kits and "etc".

 

Word, thanks for your input.