Hey all. We have the first official set of Buddy Club Racing spec coilovers in the country for the BRZ/FRS. Today we are test fitting them and doing some testing with setup and function.
First impressions on the product:
I have dealt with Buddy Club products for a long time so I expected them to be the same good quality as the rest of their products. Trying to stay very unbiased for the sake of this write-up I can honestly say that Buddy Club didnt rush anything. I have dealt with a lot of different brands of coilovers and the quality of the Buddy Clubs is very good. Right out of the box there was nothing that I could see under par.
Fronts:
All of the mounting for brake lines and ABS sensors were in the proper locations on the front coilovers. The fronts have the upper camber plates and they are slightly off center pointing toward the fire wall (similar to the whiteline front mounts). So adjusting negative camber will adjust caster at the same time. With leaving the camber plates at "0" (in the middle) they are centered like the oem mount. We left them at "0". The upper bolt hole on the spindle mount is not oblong. If you use the OEM shouldered bolt you will be fine but you can use the none shouldered bolt (like the bottom bolt) and get maybe another -.25 to -.5 degrees camber out of just swapping the upper bolt without modding the upper hole. We will have it on the alignment rack asap and we will post the exact spec since we left the shouldered bolt in.
Rears:
The rears are very straight forward and were very simple to install.
The full set out of the box...
Removing the KW's to install the Buddy Club's...
Comparing the fronts
Front Racing specs installed...the fronts are inverted so the adjuster is on the bottom...
Rear coilover comparison...
Rear upper mount with the adjuster on top...
On the car:
This is the height I will be running on my BRZ for daily driving. At this setup the Buddy Club's are about the same height as I had the KW's in the front but the rear is a little lower. However the KW's were as low as I felt comfortable going without sacrificing performance and to be honest if it was to go to the track then it would probably come up a little to optimize travel since the spring rates would be a bit soft for me on the track.
So far I have not had much time to test the Buddy Clubs but my first impressions are that they are noticeably stiffer then the KW's (of course the spring rates are a bit higher).
**More to come**