KillerBee370

A little while ago I decided to try out the GT Motoring Challenge Comp coilovers on the killerbee. Since installation I have done a fair amount of regular and spirited street driving as well as one track day at Auto Club Speedway (video coming soon).

I'm no expert by any means on suspension or really how to properly relate to you in finite detail, the feedback that say, Michael Shumacher might give you however I will give you a seat of my pants style feedback.

I had a chance to drive the stock suspension for just a little while before going to much stiffer springs (Tanabe GF210) that were eventually matched up with a set of sway bars (Stillen).

First, some pics of the parts as they came out of the box:









Very clean and everything was well packed.

Now some install pics with a few things of minor note:


A pic showing the stock front shock with aftermarket drop spring intalled and the Challenge unit next to it:


The stocker in place (front):



The Challenge front in place:



Rear aftermarket spring and stock shock in place:


The rear challenge spring and shock in place:





Note: the stock rear shock has a nut welded into place:


The Challenge unit will require that you get a nut to replace the stock one:


Note: the stock front shock has brackets welded in place for brake lines etc. The Challenge unit does not however that's nothing that good ol fashion zip ties can't handle:



zip ties ftw! (no problems whatsoever with movement, clearance etc.)




So, you will need to improvise in a couple areas during install as shown above however, the installation process was very smooth.

I don't remember too much about how the stock suspension felt so I can't really make a fair comparison so I will speak to the differences between the Tanabe GF210 spring/stock shock setup VS. the Challenge coilover setup in this case.

Let me start by saying that the GF210's are a STIFF spring. I have two track days at Auto Club Speedway on them and together with the Stillen sways they were a force to be recon with with two major drawbacks... 1. no adjustable ride height and 2. no rebound dampening adjustment. All in all the setup performed well on the street and even better on the track in my opinion but definitely lacked finess when it came to any dampening. On the street it was just pure overkill. But I like that so it didn't bother me any

Okie dokie... so upon the Challenge going in I couldn't tell any big difference while driving on the street until I started to get a bit spirited. The suspension has a 12 way adjustable damper and I had it dead center. I found that to be a bit too slow on the rebound for my personal taste. Bear in mind that I still have the Stillen sways on (set to the stiffest setting). The Challenge springs are stiff. Are they as stiff as the Tanabe's? I don't know. They feel it but there is a bit more body roll from track pics of my vehicle so perhaps I just had not had the rebound set properly? I backed off a few clicks and it feels very stiff and snappy on spirited drives in turns however without pictures to compare, it's kind of hard to know for sure. I will say this, the car felt extremely tight at the track and I felt that with the improved dampening I could push harder in the corners than I could before with the Tanabe's without fishtailing out of turns. In that respect it made a noticable difference.

All in all I would say that I am very happy with the performance aspect of having these coilovers and the quality is solid. I am still learning to figure out a proper dampening setup but the car is so far above and beyond the bone stock setup that it's just ridiculous. I would say for the pricepoint of these coilovers, you really can't go wrong.

Adding a couple replacement nuts for the rear shock brackets and perhaps a few zip ties would serve this setup well but everything else is spot on.