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Old 05-02-2017, 11:12 PM   #1
sirbobbinhood
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Feal 441 suspension review

tldr; Great suspension for the price, great company to work with. Definitely recommend.

There's not a whole lot of info out there for this company, besides a post or two saying they did pretty good in Autocross nationals a couple of years go. The coilovers looked nice and where in my price point so I figured I'd give them a try.

Company
I gave the guys at Feal a call before ordering to talk about the options for the coilovers. They have a ton of options and can completely customize your setup based on tires, weight and use of the car. They're also super helpful and answered all my questions along with giving me a good timeline for when the coilovers would be shipped out since they custom build all of them. I ordered the standard setup for the BRZ as I'm going to be changing tires next year and didn't want an off balance setup with my current tires.

The Goods
First thing I liked about these is that they don't use anything but Swift springs. I also love the lime green but that doesn't really make any difference. I ordered the kit with the Shockwears to make sure my threads stay in decent shape since I drive it year round.



I haven't run any other coilovers on these cars but these ones seem like they're well built. They came pre-assembled and I didn't have to take them apart for any reason except for one little problem with clunking. I had a clunk in the rear of the car after I first put them in. After looking around for a day or two the problem ended up being the top hats on the rear coilovers were finger tight. Once they were tightened up I had no problems with them.
They also ship with a new set of front sway bar end links not adjustable but they seem to fit pretty good with where I have the car at.





The coilovers are single adjustable and have 30 clicks of adjustment. I ended up buying the extended adjusters for the rear which work great in the car. I ended up poking holes in the trunk lining and they just hang out there.
The front adjusters just drop in so I don't leave those in even though I'd like to. I just keep one in the glove box.
Also these came with a shock dyno for each corner which is cool.

Packaging





Install
They went in just like any other suspension. I set the ride height about an inch and a half lower than stock and they don't have too much more to go after that for the fronts. The rears have tons more thread.

Compared to stock struts with RCE Yellow springs


Rear


Front


Mounted with Shockwears on


View from the engine bay


Corner balance and Alignment
I set the ride height with some digital calipers so I knew it would be pretty close to right but the tech that did the alignment and corner balance at a local race shop said it was almost dead on.
With rear lower control arms and front camber bolts I was able to get -3.5 degrees camber in the front and -2.5 in the rear.

Daily driving
I drive this car every day to work and the coilovers aren't going to change that. The roads aren't great either but they ride pretty good with the damping set to the middle. The car still feels great and the ride isn't going to break you spine.





Autocross
Autocross is where these really shine. I'm not super competitive and I've only been doing this for a year but these things feel really good. At the first event I was spinning the car constantly but I think that was due to running the stock sway bars. Once I picked up a stiffer front bar the car felt great.
Even though I'm new I had a driver that has more experience driving 86's take my car for a spin and he said it felt great. Not as much power as his do to some different mods but he said the handling was on point.
I tried turning up the damping stiffness and it felt even better than before. I haven't played with the damping adjustments much yet but with 5 clicks I definitely felt a difference and it showed in the lap times.

Last autocross with the car. No audio thanks to my old GoPro but it was my fastest lap.
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYfTph20HQo"]Last run NWAA 4/23 - YouTube[/ame]

Shock dyno sheets
There's no real identifiers on which shock was which besides F for front and R for rear but still it's better than nothing and they were free. @swarb








Last edited by sirbobbinhood; 05-03-2017 at 08:06 PM.
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Old 05-02-2017, 11:22 PM   #2
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Nice write-up and review - thanks for sharing!
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Old 05-02-2017, 11:23 PM   #3
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What spring rates did you get?
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Old 05-03-2017, 12:19 AM   #4
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my brother has Feal's on his STI and he loves them as well. apparently they have a good following in the WRX crowd too
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Old 05-03-2017, 12:21 AM   #5
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Nice review! Do you plan on getting some rear lower control arms to dial back the negative camber in the rear? I believe that as the rear compresses, negative camber increases so the optimal contact patch in a corner would be achieved with less static camber in the rear? I've also heard that you want a certain ratio/balance of camber front to rear though.
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Old 05-03-2017, 01:01 AM   #6
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From pics he already seems to have rear SPC LCAs.
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Old 05-03-2017, 01:19 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Clipdat View Post
What spring rates did you get?
The standard setup is 7k/6k. You can order custom rates.

@sirbobbinhood Can you post pics of the dyno sheet?
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Old 05-03-2017, 07:29 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by swarb View Post
The standard setup is 7k/6k. You can order custom rates.

@sirbobbinhood Can you post pics of the dyno sheet?

So I'm not the only 'crazy' guy that likes softer rear springs!
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Old 05-03-2017, 08:00 AM   #9
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So I'm not the only 'crazy' guy that likes softer rear springs!
Nope
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Old 05-03-2017, 02:21 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ApexEight View Post
Nice review! Do you plan on getting some rear lower control arms to dial back the negative camber in the rear? I believe that as the rear compresses, negative camber increases so the optimal contact patch in a corner would be achieved with less static camber in the rear? I've also heard that you want a certain ratio/balance of camber front to rear though.
I already have rear LCA's I don't think I'd be able to get that camber with the stock ones.

I actually asked for that but I'm thinking it may be a bit too aggressive from what I've heard from other 86 drivers the 1 degree difference front to rear seems to work pretty well for autocross.

I think the camber would be perfect if I had some stickier tires but I'm on pilot super sports now so I don't think they can compress the stiffer springs enough to really make use of the camber.

Quote:
Originally Posted by swarb View Post
The standard setup is 7k/6k. You can order custom rates.

@sirbobbinhood Can you post pics of the dyno sheet?
I'll try to remember to get those tonight I thought I had some pictures of them already. It might take me a day or two to remember to dig them up.
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