RSR Coilovers, how effective are they?

Yeah go Blatta!! It's been a very reliable street and track car. Typically at the track I let some of my buddies drive it around (HPDE) for awhile and end up doing 150-175miles of track time in the day really heating it up in 95 degree temps. Real 4 door sedan track driving. Again stock suspension but with R compund tires and drilled and slotted brakes. Turns are nice and fast as well as anyone but the Milano needs some giddy yup to keep close in the straights. Lots of fun and am able to be "competitive" with other 20 year old basically stock BMW's and Datsuns, and Miata's.

After this track season, I plan to replace and lower back springs, replace bushings front and rear, watts linkage, etc. and a bolt in roll bar to start time trialing but still keep it street capable. I really don't know how a "new" Milano is supposed to feel when the suspension is tight so I'm hoping for a big improvement in handling.

Grant said:

...Hey, what do you do when the shocks blow? Do you send them back to Ron or can they be rebuilt in the states?...

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Don't know - never had a set blow up on us! I guess that you would just send them to G2 here locally and draw replacements from stock!

Grant said:

...Jon, you should bring your Verde down to an AROSC race at Buttonwillow or something. It's not TOO far for a once a year thing

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I've driven it down to Laguna Seca in the past - that was nice... The only problem for me personally is that no matter who you are, what level your experience, how many races you've done, or what you drive - the SoCal club won't let you run without first going through their ground-school and everything!)

It sort of sucks because when our club hosted the national convention up here two years ago, we were in the same position - we bent the rules for out-of-towners as a courtesy though! That same courtesy was not extended the last two times I came down! (They wouldn't even let Ron Simons drive at Willow and he holds an FIA license!)

Not much incentive to drive all of that way only to play follow-the leader at lunch time!

Grant,

You don't need to spend $700 on tires. You should start your suspension
tuning w the best tires you can reasonably afford. I've found the Yokohama
AVS ES100 to be a really decent street tire for the gtv6 in 205/55/15.
Not a track tire, but usable on the track and auto-x.

I am running Kumho ECSTA MX 205/50/15 now and have really liked them
all around. Almost a full on auto-x tire, they are still streetable.

The Yokohamas and the Kumhos are ~$75 per tire. No point in getting
Toyo RA1s or Michelin Pilots. Well if you had the cash and nothing
to do w it. All my porcha friends say they are worth it.

The 2 most profound performance upgrades for me have been.

Wider stiffer sticker tires.

Bigger front sway bar.

How do you like the Performatek sway bars ?

I have confirmed that the RS Racing stuff and Intrax are a joint collaboration. The RS/ Intrax shocks use high pressure Nitrogen in them. Here is a snippet of a thread from gtv6.org with Ron commenting on some interesting things regarding shocks.

"Hi Guys,

I would like to add something to this discussion and give you another option too.

I'm driving an old Group A Auto delta works Alfa GTV6 which won alfa the european championship in 84. back then the car was driven by Lella Lombardi and Giorgio Francia. The championship car was using bilstein non adjustable shocks back then. I drove the car with these shocks and i think they where good at that time but there were better alternatives available. Now i'm running this car with an intrax full race suspension adjustable system under mutual development.

Now, since i'm using 10 Alfa 75's and my own road going GTV6 for my Advanced Driving Academy i had to face the challenge again and built a new system that would be perfect for the combination of fast street and track day use. The system can be lowered on-the-fly upon arrival at the track.

The yellow koni's are not good for the GTV6. hard but no performance. The bilsteins are far better and the stiffness pays of with increased handling. Both set's are a little bit dated though.

Now the most important thing. If you lower the car you also need stiffer springs. For the rear it's easy. for the front it's a little more difficult so people stop after lowering the torsions."

I'm using Ron Simons sway bars - the Performatek bar was only 3 position adjustable, I wanted 4 way adjustability. In retrospect, I wish I had the 24mm rear sway bar, the 26mm rear sway bar I think is too much....I think it is supposed to be matched up with the 30mm sway bar.

In another thread, I mentioned the RSR rear bar doesn't work with the stock exhaust routing on my car atleast. I'd go with Performatek for the rear atleast.

I just mounted ES100 225/45/16. I had to do some fender modifications but it wasn't too bad. So far, the grip is noticeably better but still isn't that great. I was going to get 215/45/16 Falken 615 or 225/45/16 Ventus RS2 but without a dedicated set of track wheels, I don't think now's the right time for me to buy 200 treadwear tires. As a reference, I'm coming from 205/50/16 Kumho 712s. Stiff but slippery. And don't ever buy Kumho 711's. They are extremely floppy, not even fun for a daily driver. They were about $44 each though in 215/50/15.