New shocks or coilovers for the S2000 - go big, or go home?

My S2000 needs new shocks. That part is indisputable - all four have a tell tale oil film on them, and on the trek home from Florida I've had one of the bottom out all the way to the bump stop a couple of times.

The question is, with what. The car will see track use next year (hopefully) and may see the odd Auto-X but I don't care about classification on the latter.

Easy button would be to throw a set of Koni Yellows on there, keep the OEM springs, new top mounts, bump stops and call it a day. This is also the considerably cheaper option. Downside is that the rear adjusters are going to be a PITA to get to and as a result I'll probably lose the adjustability for most use cases.

The spendy option is to throw a set of Öhlins coilovers on there. I don't really need coilovers, but the ability to corner balance the car would be nice. The other benefit of the Öhlins is that there's a company out there that updates them to fix a rear suspension travel issue (now where have we heard about one of those before on a small convertible from Japan?). Concern I have about that part is that it's a third party vendor - albeit one I've heard positive things of before - modifying the original coilovers. I've had stock Öhlins on my RX8 and was very impressed with their DD drivability, not 100% sure how I feel about modified ones. That said, this particular vendor basically tries to work with the customer to custom build the coilovers to meet the needs of the customer, which may be nice.

What I'd want ideally is the equivalent of the FM Fox shocks for the Miata, but for a car that fits me. I just haven't found that FM-like vendor yet, and a lot of the people in the S2k suspension game seem to be fond of spring rates so high you don't have to worry about the shocks moving. I'm more of the soft springs and control body roll with swaybar school of thought.

Just to clarify - I'm not looking to lower the car much, maybe 1/2 or so if that. What I'm after is suspension performance, not scene credits.

There are a few mid-price options that aren't cheap crappy stance scene coilovers (BC, Skunk, Teins) but if I'm going through the hassle of a modified car inspection in WV - which I would have to for coilovers - I'm going big, using parts I know.

Thoughts?

Redshift motorsports puts Bilstein guts in BC Racing shocks and they work well. Don't know how DD friendly they will be. I also don't know if he's got a S2k setup ready to go. I know he built a set of Gen 1 Cadillac CTS-V shocks for Brian Keuhl for SCCA TT Nats. For the price, worth looking into. 

MCS Shocks are the go to of my friends point end of the field autox friends and should be price competitive with ohlins I believe. 

I love the BC Racing shocks I have on my Solstice. Adjustable for stiffness and height and they seem to be very well made.

I've seen a lot of your threads here.  The common theme seems to be spending time and $ building/setting up a car and not spending that much time using it for whatever reasons.  I would reccomend you keep it simple and just get out there and use the car.

CR Springs + OTS Konis.  Keep it close to OEM for reliability, street use, etc.  Plus, easy to fix if anything fails (no custom valving BS + wait times).  If you aren't concerned about classing, you probably aren't concerned about the last 1% of suspension performance on track.

Add in a bigger front bar and you'll have a blast on track.

In reply to ProDarwin :

Let's just say that I'm very aware that the biggest issue with this car's performance is going to be the loose nut behind the wheel.

Didn't think of the CR springs, I like that idea.

The problem with all the s2000 coilovers is that they all have pretty short travels. There just isn't enough room. Hence all the cars used seriously for autocross use really stiff strings.

freetors said:

The problem with all the s2000 coilovers is that they all have pretty short travels. There just isn't enough room. Hence all the cars used seriously for autocross use really stiff strings.

S2000s don't run wheel rates significantly higher than other autox cars.  Remember, their motion ratio is fairly low (0.58) so the spring rates might seem high for a given wheel rate.

Have you considered a set of Bilstein PSS's? Price comes in at a couple hundred more than Konis and springs, but give you the option to corner balance. I personally trust Bilstein over most other budget coilovers like BC Racing or Fortune Auto. 

Subscribig to see if Keith Tanner will ever start building us S2000 folks something. 

In reply to MrFancypants :

I wasn't - I'm not that big a fan of Bilstein. If I do go through the hassle with the additional inspection I need to legally run coilcovers on the street, I'm pretty much going straight to Öhlins rather than try out the mid-price options. It does seem that the one suspension thing everybody on S2ki seems to be able to agree on is that if you want coilovers for performance, skip the other options.

ProDarwin said:

freetors said:

The problem with all the s2000 coilovers is that they all have pretty short travels. There just isn't enough room. Hence all the cars used seriously for autocross use really stiff strings.

S2000s don't run wheel rates significantly higher than other autox cars.  Remember, their motion ratio is fairly low (0.58) so the spring rates might seem high for a given wheel rate.

Ah, that explains what looked like insane-to-me spring rates for normal road driving.

The S2000 has fairly short shock travel in the rear even with the stock shocks. Kinda a like an Answer that we occasionally talk about on this forum. The modified Öhlins I'm looking at are supposed to fix that as much as possible, which is why I was considering them over a set of out-of-the-box Öhlins.

As stated the S2000 has pretty limited rear damper stroke. I would spring for a set of Ohlins with Sakebombs recommended specs. Ohlins aren't the greatest damper out there, but they are quite solid for the price. 

Additionally, Sakebomb has created this quick reference sheet here: (https://www.s2ki.com/forums/s2000-brakes-suspension-249/%C3%96hlins-dfv-recommended-pre-load-vs-ride-height-helpful-chart-inside-1166830/)  

This provides a good idea of ride height vs. spring preload and spring rate. 

^Are you sure you mean damper stroke or do you mean bump travel?  Damper free travel is 3.25" from what I've read which is about 5.6" at the wheel.  This isn't an insanely low number.  There is stroke beyond that but you have engaged the bumpstop.

Bump travel is a different story.  There are mount kits that effectively pull the piston higher in its stroke to trade some droop travel for bump travel similar to the rear mounts for Miatas.

Also IIRC the stock rear shocks have an external reservoir to maximize piston travel.

The first thing I would do on an S2000 with rear travel issues is get rid of the rear swaybar.

In reply to goingnowherefast :

I was actually thinking of the Sakebomb "long travel" Öhlins.

BoxheadTim said:

In reply to goingnowherefast :

I was actually thinking of the Sakebomb "long travel" Öhlins.

The Sakebomb long travel are wonderful on the variety of cars that they have built them for. I did the simple route on the FD for ages and the lack of rear travel and bump stop setup was annoying and kept me changing suspension setups over the years until I learned about what the core issue was after Sakebomb introduced those. 
Id go with those and enjoy the ride instead of the annoyances I lived with over the years. Maybe go for softer spring rates...

amg_rx7 said:

BoxheadTim said:

In reply to goingnowherefast :

I was actually thinking of the Sakebomb "long travel" Öhlins.

The Sakebomb long travel are wonderful on the variety of cars that they have built them for. I did the simple route on the FD for ages and the lack of rear travel and bump stop setup was annoying and kept me changing suspension setups over the years until I learned about what the core issue was after Sakebomb introduced those. 
Id go with those and enjoy the ride instead of the annoyances I lived with over the years. Maybe go for softer spring rates...

That does sound like we may have a winner then.