P5 Puredrive vs Gaz

[Ab Shocks]

MX-5 Lazza said:

Well what you won't be doing by uprating the suspension is adding more grip. You will add more control so you can increase your entry & exit speeds and make it easier to control the car in corners so will improve your overall speed.

Control is the key and control of the correct springs for the task by damping will give you more grip by virtue of rebound, keeping the tyre on the blackstuff is what the damper does more than anything else, yes it does also control bump but a typical ratio of rebound v bump is 3-1 on a rear shock.
You would normally find that the increase in spring rate on the aftermarket kits would limit body roll more than the standard cars 95lb rear and 155lb front springs allowing the faster entry and exit speeds Lazza mentions.

No mention of geometry but I would argue that geo has a part to play in giving better turn in, more grip on the front and on the rear, more high speed stability and better traction.

MX-5 Lazza said:

On rough/bumpy roads you need some compliance to keep the tyres in contact with the ground which is generally why a full track setup is no good on the road whereas on the track you want some stiffness to help avoid too much roll without having to resort to big anti-roll bars. I'm not techy enough to be able to explain it but I do appreciate how it feels on the road & track.
[quote]
I'm sure one of the experts will be along soon to answer that question better than me though.

Again it's rebound keeping tyre contact on the road but compliance is key on road and track cars. On track you want to ride the kerbs, not bounce up in the air losing traction and grip. On road cars you want enough stiffness to limit roll to sensible levels but at the same time you want to absorb shocks and keep traction when you hit bumps. One of the main reasons you find rear wheel drive cars losing the rear end is lack of rebound and this is because the bump/rebound ratio is wrong. Its not easy getting the balance right, I recently spent 2 days going backwards and forwards to Nitron with a new range of shocks for TVR until I got the right ratio. Its a bit easier with two way + shocks but I think that is a subject we will leave alone, 1.3k +

Edited by Ab Shocks on Friday 2nd January 01:06

[maz8062]

Shocks, springs, arb's etc etc CAN make the car handle faster - tuition and a decent alignment WILL make the car handle faster. If one has the best suspension, but no skill handling the car what difference does it make? I have reasonably good suspension and a Torsen, but I'm still not that confident under certain conditions and would likely get thrashed by a competent driver on stock suspension.

Discuss....

[Ab Shocks]

maz8062 said:

Shocks, springs, arb's etc etc CAN make the car handle faster - tuition and a decent alignment WILL make the car handle faster. If one has the best suspension, but no skill handling the car what difference does it make? I have reasonably good suspension and a Torsen, but I'm still not that confident under certain conditions and would likely get thrashed by a competent driver on stock suspension.

Discuss....

But...Do you enjoy yourself?

I would say that if you move the car forward and then follow the quick drivers round that you would improve by taking better lines and learning braking points and limits.
That said, if your car handles fine and you are happy, I would spend my money on getting on track and upgrade when the car reaches its limits.

[StressedDave]

Ab Shocks said:

maz8062 said:

Shocks, springs, arb's etc etc CAN make the car handle faster - tuition and a decent alignment WILL make the car handle faster. If one has the best suspension, but no skill handling the car what difference does it make? I have reasonably good suspension and a Torsen, but I'm still not that confident under certain conditions and would likely get thrashed by a competent driver on stock suspension.

Discuss....

But...Do you enjoy yourself?

I would say that if you move the car forward and then follow the quick drivers round that you would improve by taking better lines and learning braking points and limits.
That said, if your car handles fine and you are happy, I would spend my money on getting on track and upgrade when the car reaches its limits.

I'm a real fan of tuition over upgradeitis as well, but I'd caution against doing a 'follow my leader' approach. I do a lot of work with racers and one of the major issues I have to overcome is that the majority of their learning of trackcraft has been by this method. It makes them very good at finding the limits of grip, but very wasteful and inefficient with managing that grip. Getting some proper tuition, preferably focussed on you rather than on learning to copy your instructor, makes a huge difference to both fun and safety.

MX5 Lazza said:

Well what you won't be doing by uprating the suspension is adding more grip. You will add more control so you can increase your entry & exit speeds and make it easier to control the car in corners so will improve your overall speed.

Actually, a carefully designed kit will add more grip. In general an OEM suspension is designed to understeer quite strongly. This effectively means that the front tyres will reach their limit of grip early compared to the rear. This effectively caps the maximum sustainable lateral acceleration at a lower level than the theoretical maximum. The controlling parameter is the ratio of the suspension stiffness front to rear, not the actual stiffness. By changing this ratio you can get closer to the theoretical maximum. With the Puredrive kit, the limit moved from 0.88g to 0.97g, running on 185/60 Yokohama S-306 tyres.

In terms of control, you're looking at tuning the low speed region of the damper curve to give the response you want. Given that the opportunities for sustained lateral acceleration are low on the road, damper tuning is IMHO more important than the selection of springs.

MX5 Lazza said:

On rough/bumpy roads you need some compliance to keep the tyres in contact with the ground which is generally why a full track setup is no good on the road whereas on the track you want some stiffness to help avoid too much roll without having to resort to big anti-roll bars. I'm not techy enough to be able to explain it but I do appreciate how it feels on the road & track.

The issue is one of the size of the vertical inputs. Even really bumpy tracks such as the Nordschleife are significantly smoother than your average British B-road. You need a reasonable amount of wheel travel on road for the suspension to work so that you don't get haemorrhoids and you need the spring rates carefully selected so that you don't get excessive pitch over bumps (pitch makes you feel ill very quickly). You then tune the high speed damping to control the motion over the bumps. Ideally you want as small an ARB as possible as they effectively couple both sides of the car together and you want each wheel to act on its own as far as possible. Some of the aftermarket ARBs are too stiff, especially when you deal with vertical inputs in corners - effectively you end up hanging a wheel in the air which effectively wastes it's potential for grip. I've had some 'interesting' moments with such equipped cars at Millbrook.

Equally you want to limit body roll as in general, the more a car rolls, the worse it's geometry gets and although it's a secondary effect, it will limit grip and more importantly limit the feedback a driver gets.

Edited by StressedDave on Friday 2nd January 09:31

[Ab Shocks]

There we go, slightly more tech-speak than I prefer for the novices but at the end of the day confirming that control is key, I love the references to big anti roll bars because they are one of my pet hates, its no good limiting roll if you still waggle wheels in the air.
Millbrook is a useful place and the boys there also work with Gaz, notably on that Monaro V8 thingy in recent times.

I think that in sumary you can say that track work is useful because road kits need a scaled down version of what works on track and I mean spring rates, damping control and geometry.

[maz8062]

StressedDave said:

Actually, a carefully designed kit will add more grip. In general an OEM suspension is designed to understeer quite strongly. This effectively means that the front tyres will reach their limit of grip early compared to the rear. This effectively caps the maximum sustainable lateral acceleration at a lower level than the theoretical maximum. The controlling parameter is the ratio of the suspension stiffness front to rear, not the actual stiffness. By changing this ratio you can get closer to the theoretical maximum. With the Puredrive kit, the limit moved from 0.88g to 0.97g, running on 185/60 Yokohama S-306 tyres.

I have Toyo R888's for summer tyres. For normal road driving I have not sampled any other tyres that comes close to the sheer grip of these tyres. Now, on stock suspension with a decent alignment and R888's, would a car shod with S 3-306 and the Puredrive kit have more grip? I doubt it. I accept the R888's are a compromise, but tyres should also be a consideration when upgrading suspension.

[StressedDave]

R-888 are a 'track day special' type tyre, which generally have a coefficient of friction some 20% higher than a generic road tyre, so no, I doubt that a Puredrive equipped car would be able to achieve the same levels of cornering acceleration. But I wasn't trying to make that comparison - I was showing the difference between OE suspension and uprated suspension in increasing the available grip levels, keeping everything else the same and not using extra grippy tyres as a band aid to cover other flaws.

[Ab Shocks]

I do like cut slicks but realise their limitations, particularly in standing water

[MX-5 Lazza]

Tyres are a completely separate discussion. For the purposes of this discussion we should assume that the car any of these suspension kits are fitted to have the same tyres and geometry otherwise we aren't comparing like-for-like.

[wheels-inmotion]

MX-5 Lazza said:

Tyres are a completely separate discussion. For the purposes of this discussion we should assume that the car any of these suspension kits are fitted to have the same tyres and geometry otherwise we aren't comparing like-for-like.

Well called.....

[mk1salami]

I've been following this thread with interest over the past few weeks and I'm in a position to buy a new suspension set up for my 5 for its return to the road in spring. The car is a BEGI 1.8, MSPNP, 550s with ~230whp.

The car will primarily be used as a road car, but it will be on the track at Knockhill a few times this year on open track days. I'm looking for a kit that will give me great feel, feedback and grip but which will also ride reasonably well over the normal British B roads.

I would also like the option to make quick adjustments to stiffen the setup when I visit the track (if necessary).

I guess I'm a bit uncertain on which kit to go for, like a lot of people reading this thread. Will I notice a positive difference by paying the extra for the Gaz Gold Pro setup at £599 rather than the Gaz setup by Ab Shocks as sold on MX5Parts? I'm a little bit put off the P5 Setup because I can't seem to just BUY them. I've got to order them and wait weeks as far as I understand?

Decisions Decisions!

Edited by mk1salami on Monday 5th January 16:16

[Ab Shocks]

mk1salami said:

I've been following this thread with interest over the past few weeks and I'm in a position to buy a new suspension set up for my 5 for its return to the road in spring. The car is a BEGI 1.8, MSPNP, 550s with ~230whp.

The car will primarily be used as a road car, but it will be on the track at Knockhill a few times this year on open track days. I'm looking for a kit that will give me great feel, feedback and grip but which will also ride reasonably well over the normal British B roads.

I would also like the option to make quick adjustments to stiffen the setup when I visit the track (if necessary).

I guess I'm a bit uncertain on which kit to go for, like a lot of people reading this thread. Will I notice a positive difference by paying the extra for the Gaz Gold Pro setup at £599 rather than the Gaz setup by Ab Shocks as sold on MX5Parts? I'm a little bit put off the P5 Setup because I can't seem to just BUY them. I've got to order them and wait weeks as far as I understand?

Decisions Decisions!

Edited by mk1salami on Monday 5th January 16:16

It's hard to justify £100+ extra on anything in these difficult times and I have a hoot on track and road on the standard shocks as do the boys with the Hornet car but the GGP shocks are a step up on quality and performance and I believe they are worth the extra. It makes no difference financially to me what kit you buy, I just think if you can scrape the difference it would be worth it in the long run.

[Ab Shocks]

wheels-inmotion said:

MX-5 Lazza said:

Tyres are a completely separate discussion. For the purposes of this discussion we should assume that the car any of these suspension kits are fitted to have the same tyres and geometry otherwise we aren't comparing like-for-like.

Well called.....

Sorry for the late response (left my mobile stick at home)

I can't agree with this because as I have been saying all along, the Pro kit is there to offer solutions for a variety of requirements and if somebody wants to run road legal slicks, its up to me and WIM to come up with the goods.
Trying to come up with comparrisons is of no interest to me, I want to deal with every car and driver as an individual by designing the kit to suit their needs and when it comes to geo its the same, does everybody want a pin sharp turn-in? I don't think so, some people like a tad of understeer etc etc.

Edited by Ab Shocks on Monday 5th January 22:33

[MX-5 Lazza]

I was only saying that we should assume that any comparison between setups would be using the same tyres and geometry. It would be easy to prove that a car with stock suspension and perfect alignment fitted with 888s has more grip than a car with any uprated suspension, poor geometry and Dunlop D89s but what would it prove? If both cars had the same tyres & geometry you would have the basis of a fair and equal comparison.

I'm happy to accept that if someone wants to run 888s all the time you would suggest a different setup for them but that wasn't the point I was making. The vast majority of people reading this thread just want a simple bolt-on kit that will work well on the road with road tyres and with a quick tweak will also work well on track and also still cope maybe with another tweak if they use track tyres. Of course we all have differing tastes with regards to handling bias but that can mostly be coped with by geometry settings.

Very few of us want a car that under/oversteers by design, most will want a neutral handling car that can be tweaked into slight under/oversteer using geometry. That makes for a safer handling car on the road for the majority of drivers.

Honestly, I haven't disagreed with a thing you've said so far, I just think you might be over complicating matters by bringing individual suspension setups into this discussion as most people have no idea exactly what they want or need (me included).

[heebeegeetee]

Can you buy standard shocks/springs for a Mk1 MX5 anymore? I thought you couldn't buy Mazda branded items for cars of that age.

[StressedDave]

MX5Parts still appear to stock them, and I doubt that a dealership would turn you away...

[Phil @ P5]

MX-5 Lazza said:

Of course we all have differing tastes with regards to handling bias but that can mostly be coped with by geometry settings.

Very few of us want a car that under/oversteers by design, most will want a neutral handling car that can be tweaked into slight under/oversteer using geometry. That makes for a safer handling car on the road for the majority of drivers.

Or dampers settings. We've set our springs to result in a neutral steady state chassis so you can potentially tune your preference with the dampers (or tyre pressures, alignment etc).

I'd agree that tyres should be taken as a different subject. You do want to compare like for like, otherwise how can you prove that X or Y has made the difference?

[maz8062]

MX-5 Lazza said:

I was only saying that we should assume that any comparison between setups would be using the same tyres and geometry. It would be easy to prove that a car with stock suspension and perfect alignment fitted with 888s has more grip than a car with any uprated suspension, poor geometry and Dunlop D89s but what would it prove? If both cars had the same tyres & geometry you would have the basis of a fair and equal comparison.

This thread can never form the bais of a fair and equal comparison because none of the kits have been compared back to back so to speak.

Gaz, by aligning itself with WIM and MX5parts is perhaps more accessible and has teamed up with respectable retail outlets. The WIM offer to fit the suspension and calibrate it is another plus. P5 Puredrive is the new kid on the block and may already have contributed to Gaz upping their game with the new GPP - The end user wins in the end from the competition.

If it were my money I'd buy Tein's, but that's just my choice.

Edited by maz8062 on Tuesday 6th January 09:51

Edited by maz8062 on Tuesday 6th January 09:51

[heebeegeetee]

StressedDave said:

MX5Parts still appear to stock them, and I doubt that a dealership would turn you away...

But are they actually Mazda components, or just some unknown brand sold by Mazda dealerships?

[Phil @ P5]

heebeegeetee said:

StressedDave said:

MX5Parts still appear to stock them, and I doubt that a dealership would turn you away...

But are they actually Mazda components, or just some unknown brand sold by Mazda dealerships?

mx5parts are copies of the original, whereas bought through Mazda would be original items (albeit double the price).