Prelude to TEIN HA installation

By Dave Clements

As i write this, the DMS setup is still on my car and the TEIN HA coilovers are sitting on the cold floor of my friend's garage. How did it come to this? It's a long story.

My first coilovers were like some absurd joke. They required some honest fabrication to get them to work properly, new strut tops and tweaking, and that was just to get it passable. Then i noticed that the front left was leaking fluid, another reason to lament i suppose. It wouldn't have been so bad, but TRI Tuning, which i purchased the set from, is known to most as second only to JC Sports on the "flake" scale. I ordered a rebuild kit for it, since it was still under warranty, but it never came, and i gave up that in search of a better replacement.

The DMS 40s came along and i was finally pleased to have a fine set of coilovers with a great reputation. Well, the reputation is fading, and the performance is meager in my experience. Be it a combination of spring rates or bad luck, my set isn't terribly satisfactory. This is for a few reasons.

First off, i got them used from a WRX. The owner was more interested in straighline performance than cornering, and was literally afraid of what would happen if he went to fast into the bendies with the amount of speed he could gather. Selling them off was his way of forcing himself to slow down. Makes sense i suppose. The spring rates i have presently are 180/350 progressive, which means that they start off nice and soft but go progressively stiff. Problem is that they are a very long spring, so it takes a bit to get them stiff. By the time i get them stiff, the body is rolling far too much.

Second, one of the rear units was already suffering from a bad seal or bushing or something, because it had obvious horizontal lines of grease across the shaft. This is a problem that has been brought to light by a number of people on the i-club forums, and a few have simply rebuilt, replaced or gone for something entirely different. One member even went back to the stock setup after at least a half dozen rebuilds.

Third, the service by the US distributor is appalling. Dave Clark is the man in charge of selling DMS products in the US. Granted, Teagues and others can get them, but Dave was the first, so many purchased directly from him. In order to get them serviced, i have to contact the retailer directly and have them take care of the problem. Dave is not impossible to reach, as i have two phone numbers and an email address that i can use, but he never calls back or responds to email. Ever. This has been a problem for some time, and it needs to be addressed. Next up is a call to DMS directly (or email) and a complaint about the local service.

This then leads me to the very recent past. A friend has a 98 2.5RS with TEIN HAs on. He's going to sell the car but wants to return it to stock as much as possible. Since they're probably 18-24 months old, the HAs aren't worth a ton, but they do have the front camber plates and rear pillow-ball mounts included, which is a big bonus. One major problem, and the only drawback i've seen to the HA, is that the spring collar and keeper are made of aluminum, and they corrode after time. I spent over two hours last night alone removing the collars with, quite literally, a hammer and chisel. New replacement collars and keepers are readily available, however, and are only $120.

I struck a deal to exchange a brand new set of KYB GR2s, a new front left top mount, and to purchase the replacement hardware, all for the set of HAs we'd be taking off the car. The deal sounded good and reasonable.

As i mentioned, the collars were no small feat to get off, but it was more a matter of time and effort than expense. In disassembling them, i noticed a few remarkable things about the entire assembly that i could put in perspective against the others that i've used and seen.

The whole package works very well as a system. Everything fits together very, very well, and simple problems were addressed during the design phase to eliminate them in the future.

Here are a few things i noticed:

The top nut and PBM work together with a washer below it, and the top hat. The nut is very long, perhaps 22-25mm, and goes all the way through the ball. On the other end it contacts a small but thick washer. This allows the ball to be compressed from the top to the bottom in sort of a clamp, but it also keeps an abundance of clearance on all sides for the plate to move around freely and rotate.

The top hat is keyed to the shaft. This is something i did not notice until i attempted to remove the top nut while the assembly was outside of the car. Frequently the whole shaft will spin if there is no pressure on the unit to keep it from doing so, most notably when it's still in the car on the ground. This is the best time to loosen the nuts. After finding that the shaft would spin, i was distressed. My previous experiences with this predicament led to the use of vice grips on the shaft to hold it still. Usually this is done on old, worn struts, so the integrity of the seal between the shaft and its seal isn't an issue, but i definitely did not want to put them on a useful part. I didn't have a vise, and could not think of any way to keep it from spinning. A friend noticed that the top hat was spinning with the shaft, and at first i discounted this as some sort of friction between the shaft and hat that would make it spin. I then realized that the same spanners used to set the spring perches would fit the hat! The light turned on at this point, and i realized that the hat must be keyed with the shaft somehow, and that the TEIN engineers had foreseen this problem and addressed it before production. Disassembly became much easier thereafter, and left me very impressed.

Two years, two cars and no leaks. Since my friend had purchased the HAs used in October of 2001, and had driven on them till late September of 2002, i had a good idea of an amount of use that the set had on them. The condition of the set when he purchased them also led me to believe that they'd been used for 6-12 months prior. Altogether they might have 25-35k miles on them, but besides the slight rusting ont he threads, dirt and spring paint peeling off, This is a testament to their build quality. I also know several people that have had HAs for extended periods of time, and haven't had any problems with leaks, failures of any parts (except the perches) or any abnormal symptoms.

Pillow ball mounts. If you look closely at the stock front mounts, you'll notice that they use a ball bearing section to allow the strut to turn back and forth with steering. This is great and all, but what about lateral movement? When the car goes up and down, the suspension moves in and out relative to the center of the car. This motion is being absorbed by the rubber in the top mount. The Pillow ball, or Heim joint, in the top of the mount, allows for 360 degrees of movement with almost no friction or resistance to the motions of the suspension. In the rear, the same amount of motion is available whereas the stock mounts allow for no motion in any direction.

My new collars/perches are still waiting to be picked up, and i need to take a stiff metallic brush to the rust-spotted threads, but i hope to have them installed tomorrow, barring any unforeseen problems, which almost always crop up.

I have a very good idea of how they'll perform on the car. They should be a little stiffer than the TRI's, and much more than the DMS, but i think that the spring length, and use of a helper spring, will improve the ride. I also think the pillow ball mounts will also be a nice improvement in reducing unnecessary movement as well as reducing friction. In the end, i may end up buying a set of GR2s and perhaps some Ground Control sleeves, who knows!