pickledchang

Before:



After:



Sorry about the after pic being a little blurry, it was starting to get dark, and i wasnt really going for ansel adams quality. the ride - awesome. a little firmer than stock, but handling is greatly improved, significant loss in body roll. took me about two and a half hours to do, the fronts obviously taking the longest. a word to the wise for anyone doing a spring install, pay particular attention to how you orient the springs in the rear, or you will have uneven ride heights with left vs right if they are even slightly different than each other.

if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.

moaiD

..awwh...nice dude!!...

BoxedOUT

That turned out way awesome!

Looks a lot better. Did you install them by yourself?

I did my DF210's with my friend, took about 45 minutes.

tmrepp

Mine would've taken me about an hour and a half, but by the time I was done it was around midnight and I was exhausted. So I took it for a drive, and had a thump. I assumed it was the front, wasn't exactly obvious from inside the car. Plus, the gap between the top of the strut and the body of the car threw me off. So, after tearing both sides of the front end apart again, I took it for a drive. So I figured nothing was wrong there, and had my dad listen from outside the car. It was the back! Forgot to tighten down the lower bolt for the shock on the LH side, probably because my buddy Ed was calling me for directions to my house to drop off repair manuals for it.

Yours looks good though, perfect drop. Settling at all yet?

pickledchang

thanks for the props... i did do the install by myself and took a burger king break in the middle. the pics really dont do it justice. ill try and get some better ones up soon. the rims look like crap in those pics/lighting.

seems like it may have settled a little bit now as ive taken it to work and stuff since i took the photo, and now that i look at it, the car is a little lower still. the wheels tuck perfect in the well and the drop is nice and balanced.

still trying to adjust to the ride a little bit, since it reacts to bumps different now than it used to. not a bad thing though, it handles like a dream compared to stock.

tmrepp

I hardly drove mine stock...haha so I have nothing to compare how it used to drive to. Eventually, I'll get some coilovers and that'll be the REAL test. :D

pickledchang

yeah, ive only got about a thousand miles on mine. i think ive fully adjusted, and i love it. which coilovers are you interested in, the Ksports (if they come out) or the tein basics?

tmrepp

Hopefully progress comes out with some...

mmcwill

Are you using the stock shocks or did you change those out?

ChelsDS

I haven't heard of anyone making different struts for us yet. That would be nice to get different ones!

pickledchang

im using the stock sturts... TRD makes some:

http://www.trdsparks.com/displaypart...&parts_id=1104

im guessing these would stiffen the ride a little bit more?

ChelsDS

I would imagine the TRDs would make the ride much more stiff, less forgiving while driving. Personally I'd love to get some cushy struts ;)

pickledchang

id actually prefer some struts that were just slightly stiffer. has anyone installed the TRD struts yet?

kcxd

Can you tell me what color wheels you have? I ordered an 09 yesterday (sane color as yours) and will get it in about 2-3 weeks. I am out buying stuff up to put on the car after I get it. I wanted black wheels but have a contact at Rota and they only go to gunmetal grey. I dont know if that color will look to similar to the car and really make it look bad. Your wheels seem grey to me and look really nice so I was just wondering if you have a color name for me. Thanks.

pickledchang

they are sold as 'gunmetal' grey, and match the car almost perfectly, only being very slightly lighter. do you not want the wheels to match at all? or just close?

kcxd

I was just worried that if it was to close in color that it would not look right. Now Im thinking that it might look better as gunmetal than actual black. This sucks I cant make up my mind. If it was just off I thought it would look bad but your look really nice.

pickledchang

they look and match even better in person, and would show if i used something else to take a picture besides a cell phone. ill see what i can do to get some better pics up (more like not being lazy about it, lol). pretty much any gunmetal wheel should almost match, or at least come very close except for a few stray hues of gunmetal here and there.

kcxd

Here is what i ended up going with. I started a thread about it so here is the link to it. Just could not find an all black wheel for under 300 bucks and after thinking about it, I like the gunmetal. The black might be way to dark for the gray. Who knows. The pictures that tire rack has are terrible so I cant tell a thing from those. All I have to go off of are the pics on here and yours looks pretty nice.

https://www.scionlife.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=228710

I think I might end up using the same springs you have. I found them for 250is on evasive motor sports web sight instead of 399 for the trd at the dealership. I did notice you said it was not nescessary to cut anything on the car to fit your springs in. Hopefully thats the case. I really dont want to do any major alterations on a car with 30 miles on it.

kcxd

Sorry to keep bothering you. I had one more question. Where did you get your springs at? And how much did it cost? Can you also post up a better picture with your window tint? I want to see if I want darker than 20% or not. Thanks for the help.

pickledchang

i got mine at a local dealer who i found on tanabe-usa.com under the 'dealer' section. if i remember right, they were about $205 shipped or something.