Review: Pro Street Coilovers from Speed By Design

[ericmpena]

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!

[spdbydesignchris]

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!

[Captain Insano]

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

[FR-S Matt]

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.

[ericmpena]

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

[mid_life_crisis]

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.

[spdbydesignchris]

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

[mid_life_crisis]

Originally Posted by spdbydesignchris

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.

[spdbydesignchris]

Originally Posted by mid_life_crisis

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.

[ericmpena]

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.

[Cjymiller]

What are the spring rates?

[ericmpena]

Originally Posted by Cjymiller

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?

[mid_life_crisis]

Originally Posted by spdbydesignchris

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.

Originally Posted by ericmpena

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.)"

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.

[spdbydesignchris]

Originally Posted by Cjymiller

What are the spring rates?

6/6