Got my car back from Horsham Developments on Friday and had a nice weekend relaxing and cruising around now that my car handles much better and is lower thanks to the new coilovers by Driftworks / HSD. The HSD’s are a massive improvement in every sense over my old coilovers, the Apex Gen 2’s. And, at last, all knocking/clunking/horrible noises are gone too!

Oh yeh, and my girlfriend got her MX5 back after 5 weeks of being at the bodyshop! She crashed it within the first week of buying it because of an accidental “drift” incident. Its back on the road now though and lesson learnt by her – don’t floor it in the wet while going round a corner!

Its always a difficult choice for me – second hand parts vs new parts. And I’m sure the choice is going to always be difficult for anyone that’s into modifying cars. On my s14a, one of my coilovers is knackered in the sense that it can’t be adjusted for different ride height, which is lame since getting my new wheels. My car remains on stilts!

Originally then, the choice was to grab a new set of the Driftworks HSD coilovers at a hefty  £745 a set. However, a set of Tein coilovers became available on the SXOC (200sx owners club) for a mere £400. I was very interested in buying the set at first, but then thinking about it further – what if the coilovers were indeed a little knackered like my current ones?

I then investigated into how much it would cost to “service” such items, or indeed replace certain parts of them. I was quoted £55+VAT per coilover!

Lets do some math then, £63 per coilover including VAT.
That’s £252 for the whole set serviced (not including any components inside the coilovers that might need replacing at extra cost)
The original cost of the 2nd hand Tein’s is £400, coming to a total of £652

The cost of the HSD’s, brand new, are £745. That’s a difference of a mere £93 earth pounds.

So why bother going for anything less than brand new?

Rotorstock 6 was last Saturday at Santa Pod and although I own my gorgeous SR20DET powered 200sx which is, of course, not rotary-powered, I tagged along anyway. Mainly to see the EDC round 5. EDC being the European Drift Championship. It was a fantastic day out, and spectacular drifting from the EDC boys.

Naturally, I took a good amount of photos. Here’s some of my favorites.