i am considering buying fk coilovers can anyone tell me anything about them and ride quality etc ..i will only be doing the odd track day mostly road use .

Depends if you can put up with a hard ride, the FK's are not the best coilovers but are suppose to be better with the bravo top mounts fitted.

If it is mostly road use, then i would stay clear.

They are a firm ride, but if you hit a series of bumps, then the car will start bouncing, which is quite frankly horrible.

They do make the handling a lot better on a smooth surface ie. a track, but on britains roads, i couldn't personally recommend them

I ran these on 17's with track tyres (stiff sidewall) for a while.

They were bloody awefull on the road, my head hit the roof over bumps. There are better options out there.

With the bravo mounts I would say they are OK, a lot of people slag them off without having experienced them first hand, with the OE mounts they are not nice however. But I have never noticed the "bouncing" either. See if you can find someone close by who has them fitted and see if you can have a ride or better still a drive, but take into account other differences eg: how new the lower arms and drop links are

As above, if its going to be mostly for road use I'd stay away. There are certain road conditions that can cause the car to bounce in rather a nasty way however I think it is curable and (on my car at least) is down to badly matched springs and dampers on the back.

I had them on for a couple of days with `standard` mounts,that was a couple of days too long for me never tried them with the bravo mounts tho` supposed to be a lot lot better

I dont know if there are 2 different spring rates you can get for them, but I've got them and I find them perfectly OK. To put thing in context, I put them on without saying anything to the wife and see never commented on the difference in ride.

never noticed or never commented!? two very different things when it comes to the female of the species

arent FK's rebound adjustable? and there are plenty of different springs available on there website.

Ninja

I have them on mine at the moment, they were awful but fitting the bravo top mounts made a world of difference, they now feel quite good. They are bouncy if you hit a series of bumps on the motorway but on decent A roads are superb, they corner nice and flat too. You can get rid of the bounce with the harder springs, but then it goes hard and crashy! However they look the part and being stainless, should stay that way, they also have a slotted upper hub mounting hole for camber adjustment.

I imagine as a track tool they are superb value, for the road, not for me, but you may like them.

If you don't like a hard ride though, best avoided, I will be getting rid of them soon because I don't like too hard a ride, it's my age you know!

Gareth

how much do you want for them

Quite happy with mine, if passengers don't like it, get out and walk. Don't know if mine have softened up a touch since fitting or if I'm just used to them, but I like em.

bit like Marmite then

Off topic: Are theese a straight fit? Just bolt on, without any fabrication?

Yep, plug and play, mine are on fairly recent standard top mounts, but as with any coilover it's worth getting the most out of them and getting a geometry check at least, mines off for corner weighting sometime before the summer.

[quote=feeblebob]Quite happy with mine, if passengers don't like it, get out and walk.

Like your attitude

If you mean FK coilovers with bravo top mounts , then there is no fabrication required , however you'll need to add the plate to join spring=mount . Jimbo , Benny , Spee know how to get around , send them PM.

I'm still not convinced about the theory of using Bravo top mounts. They have more rubber giving a softer ride, but surely this also allows more suspension movement leading to poorer handling, achieving the opposite of what was intended by putting coil-overs on in the first place

You don't get any more movement, you just get metal-on-rubber bumping around rather than metal-on-metal bumping around (note the technical terms there ) with the OE mounts the ride is just too hard and crashy for my liking, but inifinitely better with the bravo rubber top mounts

The OE mounts still have rubber in the mount, theres just not as much as the Bravo mounts, so you've never got metal to metal. The softer you go with the mount the more movement you will get in all directions. Its the same principle of why people change to poly-bushes,less movement harsher ride.

You will get more movement at the top of the strut with the bravo mounts that's guaranteed, it's a large rubber mount as opposed to the coupes more metalic version.
But does that translate to a sloppy feel, no !

I'm not sure how it would hold up as a track car, it probably wouldn't be accurate enough but as a road car they are perfectly fine.

Solid alloy bushes on a road car would be a waste of time, they are uncomfortable and pointless for the conditions the car is driving in, so I wouldn't worry too much about trying to recreate that solid feeling.

In real world terms having some give is surely better, stopping the car bumping off line (harder does not always equal better suspension) Obviously as jimbo says on a smooth track this is not such a factor.