Ok, so i have had the m7 coilovers on for a few days and figured i would give my first impressions of them. Keep in mind this is a FIRST IMPRESSION.

My basis for comparison for functonality, feel, etc is based on the following suspensions i have had in the past 15k miles: stock, H-sports and stock struts, megan coilovers (oh no!), JCW kit, and briefly (less than 1 mile driving) h&r coilovers.

I also have NOT had the car aligned yet, so that will effect my impressions.

Car has 215/35/18 tires and h-sport comp rear bar set to the middle adjustment. car also has sunroof as well as cold weather package.

The Good:

First impressions, the car feels like a cross between the h-sports and the JCW kit. I am running 4 clicks from soft in the front and 5 clicks from soft in the rear, and the car feels very solid and stable. keep in mind i did not like the h-sports, as they felt squishy like a cadillac.

compared to h-sport springs and the JCW kit, the car feels a lot more planted. I loved the JCW kits handling, and so far the m7 feels equal in every aspect, but seems to rotate the car more with less body roll than before. with the jcw kit my car would wallow back and forth over a few sections of my daily 2 mile work commute. thus far the m7 wallows (left to right bounc) about 50-75% less over the same sections.

I have heard a lot about how the m7s absorb bumps well, and i can defintly back up what you have been hearing. Over road expansions and small pot holes, the suspension just soaks the roughness right up.

Also good, over varied terrain, etc, they are SIGNIFIGANTLY smoother than the megans that i used to have. i attribute this to the megas running out of suspension travel regularly. The megans were borderline non-streetable, the m7s so far seem to not have a suspension travel problem.


THE VERY GOOD:

As m7 stated, the adjustment ***** are VERY convenient. you can reach and adjust the fronts by turning the wheel to full lock in either direction and reaching under the car. the rears are just as easy. The clicks are positive, and progressive.

The Bad:

The car overall feels a bit "bouncy", more so at 0 soft f/r and less so the higher up the adjustments you go. BUT!, the car is DEFINITLY less bouncy than with the jcw struts and springs, especially over bumps. This may be attributed to the 35 profile tires, but i doubt it. It is MUCH less bouncy than h-sport springs.

As previously stated, the fronts you can adjust the height of the shock body inside of the "sleeve" to raise and lower the car. this is both true and false. The main problem that i see is no matter what you do all three of the lock rings are going to be touching each other due to the design. to safely secure the actual shock body into the knuckle, the amount that is threaded will still cause the front springs to be pre-loaded. any height adjustment from there will be increasing the front spring pre-load. there just isn't any way around it with this design. This isnt necessarily a BAD thing, as that is how you adjust most other coilover systems... but i think that the whole up-sell of the independently adjustable shock body and mount is WAY over played as a benefit in the sale of these. if you need a visual of what i am talking about see the M7 test install pictures.


Weight. these coilovers weight quite a bit more than a h&r coilover setup. this is not based on scale weight, but me holding each front in my hand for comparison. the h&rs are pretty light, the m7s are a bit heavier. the m7s also look quite a bit stronger than the h&rs too, especially with the large piston size.

compared to similirly priced coilovers, the adjustment spanner are quite pathetic. i recommend gloves when adjusting if you have soft sissy boy hands like i do.

fit and finish: overall the shocks were delivered to me in OK condition. a few of the threads on the shock body looked to be dinged and or marred in the assembly process. also there were scratches on the upper adjustment lock rings, due to the spring rubbing against them in the packaging. this is true for both fronts. one of my rear lower mounts also had visible pitting in the metal, which was painted over in the finishing process. i can visualize a very large parts bin that has been sitting for a while.

INSTALLATION:

installation was surprisingly very easy, but i have done a lot of suspension work on the mini so i know my way around. dont forget to drill out the rear upper pre-dished washer, as it will not fit.

a note to all you who will be embarking on the install. do not forget to stretch the upper part of the dust boot so that it sits down below the spring hat flat part mount on the shock. if you do not the whole assembly will be tightened onto that upper rubber lip (about 1/8") of the dust boot.

the bad part of the install: the struts do not have an allen keyway cut into the tops of them to assist in tightening the strut tops. in my experience hand tight is plenty enough to hold a strut assembly together, especially with lock nuts, BUT it would be much easier for disassembly if they had the allen holes in them.

__________

that is my first impression. i am open to all any any questions regarding these coilovers. i will have a long term impression in the next few weeks as they break in, and will also give drives at the dragon to whoever is interested. i am optimistic that these will work out. time will tell.

i will not be corner balancing. for a street car it is not worth it

.

 

Nice wrapup, thanks. Nearly everything you report is consistent with my installation and driving experience. My coilovers arrived with scratches and marks similar to yours--I don't care as no one but me will ever see them!
One thing: those 22mm nuts on the top of the front struts better be pretty tight...or you will get nasty knocking sounds over rough roads. I have IE camber plates which require considerable disassembly to get to these nuts...and I did it 3 times each before I got enough torque to get absolutely no sounds over rough roads. Hand tight would be about 60ftlbs too few in my opinion. And the strut tops can take it--they are about as big as I've ever seen--no snapped off threads like the PSS9s!
I also agree that they are a bit bouncy. I haven't tried upping the clicks yet as I get an alignment and corner balance tomorrow AM. Things will start getting interesting after that...

Again, glad you posted your impressions, especially given your vast experience with MINI suspension. (Many more different systems than me.)
btw, I think there's something wrong with your camera--it's at a very odd angle!

 

defylogik, thanks very much for taking the time to post.
You're first impressions are very interesting and i'm looking forward to hear more from you and DrPhil as well.

 

yep. i really wish i could have kept the h&r coilovers overall, as my 1 mile impression of them was excellent. well except for the fact that at maximum height my lip spoiler was scraping the ground

 

Great write up how much lighter or heavier are they than the megans?

 

i would say they are about on par with the megans as far as weight. i have to give a point to megan, as their fit and finish is higher than the m7s... but obviously they had their flaws.

 

Really well detailed write up. I noticed a bit of a " bounce " the first two days I had them but the sensation went away. I do not know if it is a brake in issue or I got used to it. I have a couple of thousand miles on them and they are nothing but stable now. The springs have fully settled and I am going to give them a turn or two higher to put it back where it was the first day. Keep the impressions coming pro and con. Thanks for the tip on the shipping scratches. We will look into that ASAP . We can only learn more by your input and work any changes necessary into future versions.

Randy
M7 Tuning

 

please take note. ship better spanner wrenches. look at the ones h&r and billstein ship with their stuff, a lot larger and longer. its the little things

 

Yes, the wrenches are very cheap, and very short. Good for getting to the shocks --installed-- but higher quality ones would be nicer to work with, either with, or without, the wheels on! Ones modelled on the Campagnolo bottom bracket wrenches (for those of you old enough to have ridden real Record equipment) would be really nice (even though I got a set of DuraAce bottom bracket wrenches and they were also top notch - pun intended).
Just a little thing, but for $1500+ nice wrenches would be nice.

btw, my driving impressions are very similar to dfylogik's--the car is very flat, soaks up bumps with a little rise and dip rather than an exaggerated bounce I had with stock, or HSports.

 

Ok we have taken your comments to heart and will pass them along. I really didn't remember the wrenches being that bad even when compared to my Leda set. As you can see in the pic below the Leda's are bigger to a degree but that set was also about $ 2400 and maybe they had more of a wrench budget In any event we will see if we can get a better version for you .

Another piece of news is that we will have in stock , the last part of may, the more track oriented version of springs . I know you will be asking so the rates are 300lb in front and 400lb for the rear. There is one other bit of info but we will be making a formal vendor release in the next few days to cover that. In any event thank you for the feedback, its a most important part of our partnership with you all .

Randy
M7 Tuning

 

Thanks, Randy. The guy at the alignment shop looked at the wrenches I gave him and winced. Even he thought they were crappy!
Here's what a real lockring wrench looks like:

This one if for a bicycle, but an equivalent could be fabricated for the COs.

btw, I set the fronts to 4 and the rears to 8 yesterday--a bit much for Albuquerque streets but certainly firmer. It's great to play with the adjustments and so easy to do. I actually pulled over into a parking lot and adjusted them!

 

Nice looking wrench ! The deisgn would not work for a automotive coil over unless you wanted to drive around with the wrench attached but it does have a nice handle All I've ever had to compare ours to were my Leda and Kw's which were rather similar. As I said we will see what we can do with regards to making it more comfortable to use.
I've done a few parking lot adjustments as well and kept my " Snap On " towel under the seat for just those occaisions . Thanks for the input !

Randy
M7 Tuning

 

I agree, Randy. My point being that you could bet maybe 3 castellation contacts, rather than one (of course there are 2 different diameter lockrings requiring 2 different wrenches). Even if you went with the old tapered design, it could be thicker (4mm rather than 2.5) with a better shaped notch to engage the M7 castellations perfectly rather than the current one, which tends to tear at the notches rather well...

btw, this is small stuff in the big picture of what are turning out to be very nice COs!
Thanks for bringing this product to market, and me.

 

Ok second update. springs are now starting to settle pretty good. they dropped front and rear abou 1/4" after driving for the past week over varied terrain.

The struts are starting to smooth out a bit, they are still bumpy but definitly a bit smoother now as the whole setup has been broken in and the springs have sagged.

going to raise the car a few clicks to level it out tommorow then it will be in at the dealer on monday for an alignment and a 4 tire re-balance. stay tuned.

oh yeah, 1/4 is a LOT of sag compared to other springs i have used. doesnt worry me, but just an observaton.

 

I started off using 0 front, 5 rear (clicks from full Low setting, adjusted up by turning clockwise). A little soft, so I went up until I got to 4 F, 8 R. A little too harsh and quite "bumpy" on streets with cracks and holes. I took the front down to 3 and it's significantly more compliant. I may have to mess with the rear, but the front feels just right, Goldilocks...

 

I ordered my set last week and will be installing them this coming weekend. I will be sure to add my thoughts as soon as I get it back on the road. I will be changing from stock shocks (49K miles) and H-Sport springs so I hope it will be quite an improvement. Currently my car is very bouncy on rough pavement so I am sure I am in need of new shocks.

As a side note, I picked the M7 coilovers due to the location of the adjustment *****. Any other location than the bottom of the shock just doesn't make sense to me.

 

update #3, tech update.

Took the wheels off today to adjust the car height, as i suspected, the dust boot is WAY too long for the amount of suspension travel when sitting on the ground. on one side the boot was completely shoved to the top of the shock and twisted inside and out.

I cut off a little less than half the boot on both sides. This should still provide functionality as a dust cover but stop them from compacting at the top of the strut and acting like a bump stop.

just a note, i had this same problem with the megan coilovers.

#1. One solution, m7 can ship a shorter dust boot. no reason for it to be that long as the shock will be compressed and make it scrunch up interfering with the suspension.

#2. You can be sure to zip tie the bottoms of the dust boot with two HVAC/ tech grade zip ties (not the cheapy ones that come in boxes of 100) or use some wire to secure the bottom of the boot to the strut body. this may cause interfearance as the boot will be pretty compressed on itself and could still get caught and bind up.

#3. Clearance them and remove a portion of the bottom of the dust boot. cut them with a knife or scissors. I had no choice but to go half way up the boot as it was all twisted inside itself. some may find less better, some more.

of note, the dust boot should also be wider so it contacts the strut body less, that would make a hella difference.

note #2 the rears have no exhibited this problem yet on inspection they look in tip top shape.

 

For those interested in what things look like, here's a photo of my car sitting on the M7s.



It could be lowered much further, but in my case I chose a compromise between clearance, handling, shock travel and appearance.

 

Very nice, Phil. That's a pretty trippin' background.
How about a pic in the light, so I can see the gap above the tire?

 

i am sitting about that high in the front, a little higher in the rear.

raise it up quite a bit then got an alignment. broke my aerokit air dam this weekend going to a british car show. went over a drop off and craaack, broke the front plastic. that was enough for me to raise it back up

 

So, the digital photographer in me comes out: if you can't see the tire clearance your monitor is not calibrated. A properly calibrated monitor (lots of good references how to do this the quick and dirty way on the web with a Google search of monitor calibration) will show the tire and the wheel well as two distinct shades of black.

But I am constantly trying to find the "perfect" profile shot for my car, so I'm sure I'll post another photo soon!

cheers,

 

Here's a cropped version of Dr. Phil's picture that I've intentionally horribly overexposed to enhance the contrast between the tire and the wheelwell:

 

Phil your car is sitting real nice . I was able to see the different shades in teh wheel well so I guess my monitor is doing its job Here are a couple of side view shots of my car. Like Phil I could go lower but i need the little bit of clearance for some of our rougher canyons. At the trck I can drop it a bit more if needed.

Randy
M7 Tuning

 

Wow, Randy, that looks fantastic! You keep tickling us with those front wheel exit vent panels, don't you? Oooo, that tickles... Now how about "when do I get some for my car?" !! They look fully functional too.
Are those 17s with 45 series tires, or 16s with the same. They look fat. And the wheels must have serious offset, or are you running spacers--maybe for the BBK?
cheers,

 

You're exactly right, when I got home yesterday and looked at it, it was perfect.