CSG Spec Tein Flex A Owners Thread

[tracerit]

Have 40k miles on my flex z at 7/8 clicks f/r and am looking for more comfort since I'm driving about 350 miles a week of freeway driving now. Are the flex A's what I should be going for?

I tried running the flex z at 12 clicks but found steering very loose and jittery. So went back to 7/8

[CounterSpace Garage]

Originally Posted by tracerit

Have 40k miles on my flex z at 7/8 clicks f/r and am looking for more comfort since I'm driving about 350 miles a week of freeway driving now. Are the flex A's what I should be going for?

I tried running the flex z at 12 clicks but found steering very loose and jittery. So went back to 7/8

CSG Spec Flex A coilovers are quite a bit different from the standard model.

[CSG Mike]

Originally Posted by tracerit

Have 40k miles on my flex z at 7/8 clicks f/r and am looking for more comfort since I'm driving about 350 miles a week of freeway driving now. Are the flex A's what I should be going for?

I tried running the flex z at 12 clicks but found steering very loose and jittery. So went back to 7/8

What exactly do you find uncomfortable?

[tracerit]

Originally Posted by CSG Mike

What exactly do you find uncomfortable?

I'm honestly looking to switch the setup on the brz up a bit. I've been close to getting a Golf R or Audi S3 the last month but when I get back into my brz, it's very hard to let go. I'm looking to keep it for another two years but I'm also at the point where I want a comfortable freeway cruiser for me and my passenger.

The Flex Z is too floaty and loose at 12 clicks from stiff and a bit harsh at 7/8. I haven't had experience with other suspensions on the brz, only on other cars, new cars. If there's something noticeably "better" and more comfortable I'd like to give that a try rather than buying a new car haha.

[Barefootdan]

The CSG FLA definitely aren’t harsh when you get into the high click count. I don’t feel like they’re floaty but since they’re my first coilovers for this chassis, someone with more experience may chime in. I use mine for my highway commute and I never thought that it was a worse feeling than stock. At 16 clicks I am more comfortable than stock while still being planted. From my understanding, CSG took out the unnecessary damping ranges and dialed in to a more refined range with these coilovers, so you shouldn’t have that problem of floating.

[CSG Mike]

Originally Posted by tracerit

I'm honestly looking to switch the setup on the brz up a bit. I've been close to getting a Golf R or Audi S3 the last month but when I get back into my brz, it's very hard to let go. I'm looking to keep it for another two years but I'm also at the point where I want a comfortable freeway cruiser for me and my passenger.

The Flex Z is too floaty and loose at 12 clicks from stiff and a bit harsh at 7/8. I haven't had experience with other suspensions on the brz, only on other cars, new cars. If there's something noticeably "better" and more comfortable I'd like to give that a try rather than buying a new car haha.

So have you tried any other settings?

[TurtReynolds]

I've upped the dampening on mine to 6F and 9R for for street driving and I honestly think it feels better this way; at least on the stock Michelins; even on Chicago suburbs pavement. Haven't had a ton of time to play with it, but the car isn't jarring or uncomfortable to drive at this dampening level and the GF also does not seem to mind it. Feels better than the Tein "comfort" setting did to me; but that is subjective.

Also got the car aligned to -3F/-2.6-ish. saying "ish" because this took hours and at a certain point you just have had enough of the manual alignment game in back and settle for whatever gave you the toe you want as long as the camber is "close". We were shooting for -2.5.

This made a world of difference, as the car was toeing out on the driver's side by about a degree front and rear before alignment and the opposite on the passenger side. As the coils settled in this began to cause some very strange behavior and feedback for obvious reasons.

Car feels great now.

Autocross is Sunday and course looks fast and smooth. should be a good chance to play with them.

[CSG Mike]

Originally Posted by TurtReynolds

I've upped the dampening on mine to 6F and 9R for for street driving and I honestly think it feels better this way; at least on the stock Michelins; even on Chicago suburbs pavement. Haven't had a ton of time to play with it, but the car isn't jarring or uncomfortable to drive at this dampening level and the GF also does not seem to mind it. Feels better than the Tein "comfort" setting did to me; but that is subjective.

Also got the car aligned to -3F/-2.6-ish. saying "ish" because this took hours and at a certain point you just have had enough of the manual alignment game in back and settle for whatever gave you the toe you want as long as the camber is "close". We were shooting for -2.5.

This made a world of difference, as the car was toeing out on the driver's side by about a degree front and rear before alignment and the opposite on the passenger side. As the coils settled in this began to cause some very strange behavior and feedback for obvious reasons.

Car feels great now.

Autocross is Sunday and course looks fast and smooth. should be a good chance to play with them.

Stiffer tires like lower settings; softer tires like higher settings.

There is no one size fits all

[TurtReynolds]

Originally Posted by CSG Mike

Stiffer tires like lower settings; softer tires like higher settings.

There is no one size fits all

That is definitely something I noticed while running around on the Falken RT615K+ after resolving my brake problem. Hooray for that seized guide pin causing me to miss autocross. :\

One of the things I'm wondering about (and will need more practice in a safe setting to do) is how changing the relationship between front and rear dampening would work. Tein has it about three clicks apart from their basic street setting, but I'm sure as of yet on whether I should maintain that balance or play with the delta between front and rear. Somehow I don't think making all the dempers even all around would be desirable.

I have a lot to learn.

[CSG Mike]

Originally Posted by TurtReynolds

That is definitely something I noticed while running around on the Falken RT615K+ after resolving my brake problem. Hooray for that seized guide pin causing me to miss autocross. :\

One of the things I'm wondering about (and will need more practice in a safe setting to do) is how changing the relationship between front and rear dampening would work. CSG has it about three clicks apart from their basic street setting, but I'm sure as of yet on whether I should maintain that balance or play with the delta between front and rear. Somehow I don't think making all the dempers even all around would be desirable.

I have a lot to learn.

don't let the absolute numbers mislead you. They have nothing to do with each other. The front is a strut, whereas the rear is not. Even the damper configuration is completely different.

The comfort settings are strictly that: comfort settings.

[mistople]

Will I need rear toe arms to get back to 0deg toe after a ~1.4" drop? I'm hearing that it may not be possible to dial out the negative toe without them.

[strat61caster]

No

[TurtReynolds]

So I have now had the car on track and it has given me a few impressions with the coilovers. First off, the car is amazing and just feels flat and capable along with confidence inspiring. I never felt as if I didn’t have safe operation of the car at any point. Everything was just easy.

I probably also didn’t push the car as hard as I could have while clearing out cobwebs from a year since my last event and trying to attune to the plethora of changes I’ve made to the car since then.

That said the car feels as if it understeers a good deal. This is not the work of the coils. For this I want to place the blame primarily on the Strano bar up front. I don’t think it’s playing nicely with the Teins and is holding me back. The car just doesn’t seem interested in turning or rotating at the middle of a turn as readily as I would like. It just sort of... pushes. The car feels heavier and heavier as I input steering if that makes sense. Great for staying safe on track i suppose as it reels me in rather guidingly, but doesn’t feel as if *I* am in control 100% of the limits of the chassis and tires. Sort of like leaving a form of nanny device on if that makes sense?

The bar has to go. OEM needs to go back in as the coils were developed against it. Once I get back there I can get a clearer picture of it’s influence on the car. It doesn’t help the bar is badly surface rusting (poor finish) and the white line end links keep grinding into the chassis. Great for autocross on stock suspension, but I think it has outlived it’s welcome with the teins on at this point.

My alignment may also be playing a hand here. The -3 up front seems... fine. Need to get pyrometer data to back that up. Driver side front could either use more camber or I need a corner balance because I’m off with me in the car a significant amount. I only weighed the car with me, a bunch of crap in the passenger footwell, and everything in the trunk kit when it was on scales and it came in at 2895lbs. I weigh 145 of that. Give or take another 100lbs if misc. junk and half a tank of gas with it. Not a very accurate picture.

Crossweight was 49.39% with that ballpark weigh in with 826LF, 759RF, 670LR, and 638 RR. Not... horrible but can be addressed. I didn’t change the height on the coils as they were “close enough” by about 0.3mm up front and didn’t want to guess at the corner balancing game. This is getting addressed soon.

Camber is still -3 and -2.6 R. What little picture I did get of tire temp data from a local sponsor showed a lot of heat on the inside of the rear tires vs the outside and I wasn’t using much of the outside shoulder on the 245/40 GT radials back there.

Meanwhile I’m sort of punishing the driver’s front tire and the passenger front just seems... fine.

Tire pressure changes seemed to have limited effect on this behavior at either end of the cars.

Contemplating pulling the rear camber back to maybe -2.4 to help the tire wear issues in back and maybe a smidge more negative at the driver front side since it’s so heavily favored. Though I am curious how much of a role the front bar is playing with that equation too.

Damper settings were fun to play with. Settled at 5F/7R from stiff and it felt the best during the whole day; but I probably could have done more. Every click seemed to bring a meaningful difference with it. Seemed to help with understeer issues a bit too. Might soften the front at this friday’s event to see what effect that has as alignment and front bar changes won’t happen before then.

Either way, even as it sits the car is more capable than I am. I need to carry more speed into corners and see what the actual grip limit is on the SX2. They howl a LOT. You can hear it in the videos below. :P

Feedback and suggestions are definitely welcome of course!

The driver definitely needs improvements. This will come as I get more comfortable and confident while trying different things.

The videos below are my local track. Fastest time was a 1:22:28. Looking at grid life results and contrasting against faster drivers and cars from the day tells me to be “fast” I should be closer to 1:15-ish. So I need to find 7 seconds on that course and I think it can be done entirely by cleaning up mistakes in my line there and just plain “growing a pair”.

[Lincoln Logs]

Originally Posted by TurtReynolds

The bar has to go. OEM needs to go back in as the coils were developed against it. Once I get back there I can get a clearer picture of it’s influence on the car.

I just did some testing with a 20mm front bar and a 16mm rear bar with my Whiteline coilovers. The sways came out a day later and I went back to the stock 18mm/15mm bars. The balance was funky with the bigger sway bars. I too run square spring rates (5kg F/R) and I think you'll like the Flex-As way more on stock sways.