Tein Type Flex - suspension setting question
 

A question for the suspension gurus out there. I am new to playing around with damping settings and not so good at describing this so please bear with me.

I have the old (as opposed to monoflex or streetflex) tein type flex coils with 7kg/mm rates front and rear. The car's lowered 1.05 inches. I understand tein recommends 1.34 inches but I don't want to go lower due to the incline up the driveway and I don't want to look like a 16 year old 'street racer'. Currently running about 2-2.2 degree camber at all four corners and zero toe front and 0.05 toe rear. The car's sitting on 205/55/16 Pilot Sport 3's on stock (for some non-US markets) 16" wheels.

There's a stretch of mountain roads where I do almost all of my 'fast' driving. Mostly 3rd and 4th gear corners with lots of camber and bumps with uneven and rippled surfaces everywhere. Fantastic for testing what the car can do and I must say, the stock car did great there.

I am now having problems on these roads with my coils and worst of all it's particularly bad over my my favourite set of corners. It's a pretty steep downhill section with a left hander that requires very hard braking, a downshift to third and followed by a right hander before coming to a second gear left, again with a lot of braking. With these coils I am now locking up the front brakes with all the bumps and dips on the road. If I brake before the bumps I lose so much speed and time going into the turns, if I brake too late, I die! lol

I have the rebound adjustments set at 5 and 6 clicks from the stiffest front and rear respectively. Anything stiffer and the front end wants to launch itself up in the air and with softer settings, the front end feels really vague and wallowy, as if I am driving an old school Buick - just rather unpleasant because it wants to follow every single groove on the road. Softening it up front makes the locking front brake problem even worse as does stiffening it.

On smooth roads I have no problems and these coilovers work wonders. It tracks really well and turn-in is very sharp and satisfying. However, I just don't have enough of these smooth roads around where I live to push the car hard.

Any suggestions on what may be causing this, if it is even actually a problem, and what I can do to fix it. After a couple of scares I am seriously thinking about going back to my stock suspension but I am not liking the thought of getting all that body roll back! If I have to buy a bunch of parts to dial this out, so be it (although I hope it's not another set of coils :)).

Cheers.

S