Review: Pro Street Coilovers from Speed By Design
 

First of all I need to give a HUGE THANKS to Chris over at Speed By Design for making all of this possible!

How I got my hands on these coilovers:
On February 10th I was the lucky winner of a free set of Pro Street Coilovers! Shortly after the drawing Chris from SBD contacted me to get my shipping information and congratulated me. I received the coilovers just a few days later on February 13th. The Pro Street's were packed very nicely with a ton of padding. I had the coilovers installed a week later on February 20th.

Customer Service Experience:
I have to say that Chris from SBD has been fantastic to work with. He was in constant contact during the shipping and installation process. Anytime I had a question or concern I would just shoot him a text message and within 2 minutes he was calling me to give me immediate answers. Top notch customer service!

Coilover vs Spring Experience:
This was my first experience with coilovers so I wasn't sure what to expect. If you're considering upgrading your suspension and are interested in coilovers then let me tell you a little about my experience.

Previously I had Eibach Sportlines installed on my BRZ for about 5 months. Over those 5 months I never got used to the harshness of the ride. It was honestly to the point where my girlfriend would scream if I hit a bump because she'd go flying. Haha! Along with the harshness of the ride, the rear appeared to be too low and saggy. I was pretty unhappy with the results of my Sportlines.

After 5 months I was just about done with the Sportlines and had convinced myself to purchase Eibach's Pro-Kit. I had ordered a Pro-Kit just 2 days before I won the Pro Street Coilovers. Although I had set my heart on a Pro-Kit, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to try out the Pro Street coilovers! I ended up selling my Pro-Kit for cheap locally and prayed that coilovers were as good of an upgrade as everyone claims.

Right out of the box you're likely not going to get that immediate "wow" impression like you do with springs. Springs are very simple with how they work and are basically just install and go. With coilovers there's a lot more fine tuning that goes into the setup. The first day I had the Pro Street coilovers installed I wasn't 100% convinced that they gave me something that springs could not. In my head I was still convinced that I would've been completely satisfied with Eibach's Pro-Kit. It wasn't until the 3rd day that I actually finished fine tuning my settings that I was just blown away by the results of the Pro Street coilovers. Although it required more time to fine tune, in the end I can say without a doubt that the Pro Street coilovers do in fact give you a much better results for daily driving than the Sportlines.

Unfortunately my only experience is with Sportlines, so I'll try to have other people drive my car who have more experience with various brands of springs and/or coilovers.

Fine Tuning Experience:
I did run into a few issues with trying to fine tune the Pro Street coilovers. First of all, these are softer springs that are meant for daily driving. With my Sportlines I had about 1/2" between my tire and fender and I NEVER hit while going over bumps. Even though I set the Pro Streets 1/2" higher than my Sportlines, my tire and fender would hit if I'd pull into a driveway or turned into a parking lot just going about 10mph.

I spoke with Chris right away and he advised me to try turning the damping adjustment all the way to hard to see if that fixed the wheel and fender hitting. This seemed to fix the front wheels from hitting the fender, but I was still hitting in the rear. On top of that, with the damping set all the way to hard the ride quality wasn't what I was hoping for with coilovers that are advertised for daily driving. I do want to mention that even at the hardest setting the Pro Street ride quality was still much better than the Sportlines.

After the first day I was a little uncertain with the whole experience up to this point. I admit that I was quick to judge. I was expecting to just have the coilovers installed and then be amazed. That simply wasn't the case. The next morning I spent some more time driving around and trying to find what do to next. I sent pictures of my wheels and Chris immediately pointed out that my wheels were sitting outside the fender, and that I would have much more clearance if I could get the wheels slightly tucked inside. My wheels are 45+ offset, and I was running 25mm rear spacers, 15mm front spacers. I knew that my wheels were sticking out about 5-10mm, but honestly I had just been too lazy to take off the spacers.

I spent the morning removing the 25mm rear spacers and ended up moving the 15mm front spacers back to the rear. So now I have 15mm rear, no spacers front. The wheels actually look much more natural at this spacing and there is obviously much more tire clearance. In a nutshell, my tires sitting outside of the fender was the primary cause of me not enjoying the Pro Street coilovers right out of the box. After I had more tire/fender clearance I was able to really have fun with the settings!

I took the rest of Friday and Saturday driving around and fine tuning my damping. I started with all 4 coilovers on the same setting; 12 clicks from hard. (There are 24 clicks total)

Setting 1: 12 front/12 rear is what Chris recommended for me out of the box. This was right in the middle and definitely a good starting point for me. In my head I imagined the car driving just a little differently so I kept experimenting.

Setting 2: 10 front/10rear is what I had settled on by Saturday. This setting felt a little more connected with the road, yet still offered comfortable ride quality. After hours of driving with 10/10 I decided that I wanted just a little bit more smoothness in my ride.

Setting 3: Last night I went ahead and tried 15 front/15rear. WOW!!!! My BRZ drove exactly how I imagined it should in my head. I gotta say there's a great amount of joy that comes from finally landing on your dream settings after 3 days of adjustments and fine tuning. So much so that I just couldn't wait to wake up today and drive my car just to make sure that the ride was actually as good as I remembered. Today the Pro Street coilovers did not disappoint! It was such a dramatic improvement with just a few small adjustments!

Final Thoughts:
After all of the fine tuning, I've finally landed to the point where I feel like my car has been given back the life and excitement that I lost with my springs. I would be 110% satisfied if this was how my BRZ came from the factory; with a nice, subtle drop and fantastic ride quality!

If you're curious if the Pro Street coilovers are for you then ask yourself these questions:

1. Is this car committed to being your daily driver with the possibility of a track session every month or so?
2. Do you want to get rid of the wheel gap without sacrificing ride quality?

If you answered "Yes!" then I can confidently say that you will be 110% happy with the Pro Street coilovers for your daily driver!

Excellent Review Eric! I know the members considering these will greatly appreciate it!


Coilovers definitely take some dialing in, as they are completely adjustable and are not a plug-n-play affair.


But with a few days of tweaking, the results speak for themselves and I'm sure idea of going backwards wouldn't even be considered.


Enjoy them, I'm all smiles every time I get to drive mine!

Thanks for the review! These coilovers sound perfect for my DD BRZ.

Any clunking with the top hats?

Nice seeing slotted upper holes too. Definitely a fan of adjusting camber on the wheel versus camber plates.

Also, how far dropped? Looks great.

No clunking at all. Fender is 25 1/2" from the ground. Drop is a little over 1"

Considering your rather unique situation, you had better have received first class customer service, so that particular evaluation is almost meaningless.
I am glad to see that it only took a few days of experimenting to arrive at settings that work for you. It's also good that the vendor contact was quick enough to recognize the true source of your problem and arrive at a successful resolution.
I'm curious to see if any of the part time racers try these and experiment with the preload adjustment. Given that the system has that, I'm a little surprised the springs aren't progressive (or are they - the pics look like no). That way you could apply preload to firm things up on race day by taking up the soft portion and back it off for street duty to get the comfort back.

These are designed strictly for street use, and are not a track focused product.

I know that they aren't for serious tracking but for some reason I thought they would work for the occasional trip for drivers that don't want to sacrifice DD comfort but still have a better handling car when they need it.

These would be suited more for drag racing than track racing, if you really wanted to expand their use.


They are quite soft and designed to absorb road imperfections, with a smooth compliant ride.


For max cornering ability on a track, I wouldn't recommend these.

In the few days I've had to experiment with the dampers, I've felt that setting the dampers to Max Hard gave me a very connected feeling to the road while still maintaining a decent ride quality.
I think these would work nicely for spirited road driving, but I don't have any track experience so I can't comment on that.
Hope that makes sense.

What are the spring rates?

Took this information from the site:
http://speed-by-design.myshopify.com...-brz-scion-frs

"Looking to improve ride quality, while improving your times at the track: Look No Further!

To shed weight, we designed Lightweight T7075 CNC Billet Upper Mounts and Shock Bodies.

Ride quality is greatly improved over the factory suspension, and our shop car has transformed into a much more compliant ride with the 336 lb/in (Front) and 336 lb/in (Rear) Spring Rates. While street manners have greatly improved, the spring rates are the perfect fit for weekend duty at the track.

24-way Dampening. Mono-tube Shock Design. As you can see from the shock dyno testing, we are able to increase rebound significantly while only marginally increasing compression. Simply put, we are able to increase handling without sacrificing comfort. (Our primary goal for the Pro Street Series.)"

Is that what you were looking for?

It looks to me like a little specificity in the website description would be in order. They still look like a really good option for a whole bunch of people, but that description could cause some problems.

6/6

I love when vendors are honest about their products.

SBD does have a TON of drag racing experience...

I appreciate the compliment. There's no point in selling a customer a mis-matched product for their needs.


I'll be completely open here and tell you that when we first started working on this project, I wanted a "Cadillac" quality ride.


I wanted soft and plush, something I would want to daily drive and not come home feeling back pain from every bump in the road.


From there, we worked on spring rates and valving to meet that goal.


This car rides like a luxury car now, and you'd be amazed at the before and after....coming from stock suspension.


However, when going soft, you compromise cornering to an extent, while gaining excellent straight line traction.


These would serve great for weekend drag strip visits, where the car will squat and go.


A stiffer suspension that is more track focused would simply spin the tires from the initial shock of the launch, resulting in poor 60 ft times.


I hope this explains the design goals for this suspension and more closely targets the ideal customer for this product.

great review, I must of missed it some where, but how much can you adjust the ride height in these?

So this is more street oriented, but will this still be an improvement from the stock set up regarding auto-x/track? Or Sportlines stock shocks? I think I want best of both worlds, and have trouble finding coils that can be comfortable yet perform well in track/auto-x situations. I'm here to have fun, and not here to break the world record times at various tracks.

Very good review!
Honestly if I had won it wouldn't have been this detailed with pictures :lol:

I just have a few questions about aftermarket coils:
- Will I have a clicking sound when making turns in the future?
- Some people end up with their steering wheel not lined up when installing coils. Why is that?
- Not the best with cars, 1-10, how difficult is it to put on coil? 10 being hard.

- I don't have a clicking sound when making turns.
- Maybe they needed an alignment? lol
- Mechanic said they're easier to install than springs.

Hope I can shed some light on your questions.

You could literally sit the tire on the fender liners, as you can drop them well over 2".....however, these are designed to be soft and squat, so you will have more travel with these over a track focused coilover.


My recommendation is allow at minimum 3/4" clearance all the way around, to allow these to compress over bumps, etc.

So general consensus is that these do in fact ride better than lowering springs?

I have 1" Hotchkis springs and my gf still hates the way it rides

FAR better than any lowering spring!

I was in the same boat as you. You should've seen my gf trying to put on makeup while I was driving with those Sportlines. lol.

Now the ride is much, much, much smoother. Like I've said, if you want to lower your car without sacrificing the ride quality, this is the way to go!

Okay I'm interested. :cheers:

haha me too! Dang girlfriends, making us spend our money :lol:
@spdbydesignchris could you PM me with pricing for these? Do they come with top hats or do we need to purchase others?

Come will pillow ball mounts.


They are $1199/set and I have 2-3 sets left instock.


Chris

Seriously considering this kit... I want something that gives a nice plushy ride... but deep down I want to track the car, but probably won't track it more than 4 times a year...

how low do they go?

Lower than your fender liners would support, haha.

You can bottom them out, I would estimate 2+ inch drop.

I'm still messing around with the damping on these and just wanted to say how it feels so far.
I tried out Max Soft all around and the car feels very floaty/cloudy. Highway driving felt really smooth and driving around town was great as well. It almost tricks your mind because I'm expecting to hit a bump or go over train tracks and feel the impact but the car just cruises right over.
I'm not sure if I prefer the floaty/cloudy feeling, but it's good to know that if I want my car to ride very softly then the option is there.

Yeah, with the dampening adjustment.....as you've seen from the shock dyno's I posted, you have a wide range of adjustment. (The beauty of coilovers!)


So, it will take playing with them and finding the settings you prefer.

What is the smallest drop on these?

anyone else have any reviews/experience with these? ? kind of interested just want to see what other think about these

Thanks for your review. When you were in your "15" setting, how did it affect the handling? I'm still stock and want to keep the cornering capacity that we've all come to love. Did you feel any compromise with the softer settings in relation to daily driving handling?

What is the coating on these? Stainless steel or...? And the warranty?

It's hard to say exactly. I've been driving around on 12 clicks from Max Hard and that seems to feel like the best balance of softness and control. The softer you go then you lose that feeling of control/cornering. 15 from Max Hard felt really nice when my priority was more comfort, but then I went to 12 clicks from Max Hard to get a little more feeling of control. 9 clicks from Max Hard was a tad bit too bumpy. I'm thinking my ideal setting is between 9-12 clicks from Max Hard, but that'll likely be different from person to person. Really just depends on how you feel your car should drive like in your head, and then finding the correct damping.

Would these still work well with occasional canyon runs?

I don't see why not. I still feel like I have great control over my car with these coilovers, but in addition I also have a superb ride quality. In fact, I've been driving a Volvo S60 for the past 3 weeks which has a great ride quality. Finally got my car back and wanted to attempt to match the ride quality of the Volvo. I turned the damping to 18 clicks away from max hard and you can definitely feel that it makes the BRZ drive much more like a family car than a low sports car. It's great to be able to make adjustments like this whenever I want.

Very interested in these! I like the idea and the design, my car is 99% daily driver with some spirited activities.. my only concern/question would be.. On the lower settings (ride height) how likely is it to rub on harsher streets? If you firm it up or max it out at highest firm settings is it still possible to rub? I know this isn't a black and white yes or no but I like the fact you can go very low.. would harder springs be in order for a slammed setup?

Example (Well aware this is a members ride, very sweet one at that): https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.n...31988933_n.jpg