I am in a search for my suspension upgrade, and when I read other posts about harsh, soft, stiff, comfortable ride qualities. I have no clue what it means comparing to my standard...

My ideal ride is to have a coilover setting about the same as M3 with 19" wheel tad abit stiffer would be perfect... what would u guys call that?

these are something just i just thought of...
comfortable ride - LS 430
Harsh ride - S2000 may be
Soft - mustang haha

 

I think the Basic's with 500lbs/in would work perfectly for you.

My car is a LS430-like ride going straight on my 19 S03's and transforms
into a sports coupe when cornering. it's perfect for me....smooth, comfy
but yet firm, minimal roll, pretty quick steering response but not too quick for
a comfortable ride to tour around town in.

358lbs/in max front 463lbs/in max rear damped by D-Specs

 

If ur interested .... I'll give you my upgrade from this past Saturday. I had done couple months research into spring rates, ride ht & ride quality. Didn't want too much drop since I was bottoming out quite a bit w/ stock already so I went with H-Techs f & r. THAT my friend is a NO NO, at least in my case. They dropped the front .5" as advertised but no where near what I thought was correct for the rear. It actually RAISED the rear slightly & looked like crap. So I went to parts dept. & pulled a set of eibach's off the shelf & used rears only. EXCELLENT. Leveled the car out.

The springs were installed over Dspec Tokicos w/ 5 setting front & 4 rear.

Now for the drive .... IMO, this is a really GREAT setup. The best way I describe it is to say that the system has 'tightened' everything up - entire suspension, the ride - the handling & how it tracks down the road. I would describe the ride comfort as only slightly stiffer than stock. Comfortably stiffer 'cause it feels more planted on the road. Not a hard ride @ all. It DOES - however - feed more road surface quality info to 'ya than stock system did or will. But again, it is not harsh.

I installed dampers & springs w/o sway bars intentionally since I wanted to compare stock to upgrade & gauge sways separately. For me the test was my favorite curve @ speed .... result felt like + 1/3 stiffer with susp 'hookin' up much sooner than stock w/ significantly less body lean even w/o sways installed.

I had gotten a good bit of quality info from KenChan on this site. He appears to have done more research than most anyone else on any G website. I now understand why he went to the expense of combining spring rates from Tein & Eibach. When I saw the affect of the Tein's by themselves I didn't even drive the car, I can't - nay DON'T even want to imagine what the ride would have been like w/o the combo. All I knew was I wasn't goin anywhere with THAT look so I just raised it back up & did what I shoulda to start with. As far as handling goes, I'd put this system up against the M3 in a heartbeat .... it's really good stuff.

 

Do you mean the Tein Basics?

 

yep, Tein Basics. If you want a tad softer ride than the Basics, I'd get the CS.

Here's a whole list of TEIN stuff listed on this page:

http://www.tein.com/ti/p30.html

For me, ive had HA's on my previous cars and I just got tired of the stiff ride
although performance wise it was GREAT. it's just too stiff for me these days
on Chicago roads. My current setup is butter smooth.

 

I have read some post about Tein would make noises. what else is comparable to Tein basic, and what if i want a suspension with more adjustability? Then what should i go for?

 

I would recommend the HKS LS or the TeinTypeCS in your case since you want
max adjustability in its price range.

I still think CS's springs are a tad too high for comfort especially on 35 profile
tires like the S03's. These Japanese engineers are designing "comfort" on
streets of Japan...they don't know what some midwest roads are like.

 

I have the HKS LS with 19's wrapped in S-03's on my sedan. It's a little stiffer than the sports suspension, but overall a nice ride. With the LS+ you can adjust the dampening.

 

aside from comfort out of Tein CS or HKS LS, how do they perform? are they about the same as stock or better?

 

I don't know. I don't have them on my car. they're bordeline performance
setup just looking at the spring rates, but should perform better than your
ordinary progressive rate lowering spring + damper setup while it compromises
comfort. that's if you set the height correctly and damp rates correctly
as well.

if you're looking for performance, I think I would use 500lbs/in + rates.