Fortune 500 Series Coilover 3 Part Review.

**R3V** · 03-05-2012

To start, I took a good amount of photos but my camera battery seem's to not want to charge so I'll need to get a replacement/fix it before I can pull them from the camera and post them. There are about a dozen or so showing the quality of these, and I'll be sure to get them in ASAP. Mod's, if you feel there is a better area for this review please move it for me.

I wanted to get my initial impression of these out while it was still fresh in my mind. Also, excuse my terminology. [IMG]http://www.*****.com/forums/images/smilies/lol.gif[/IMG]

This will be done in 3 stages. I was hoping to have these arrive sooner so I could use them to lower the car and provide more of a performance oriented review, but alas they only got here a week or so ago so plans have changed.

The three parts of this review are:

Unboxing, Install, and Initial Impressions
Performance Drop, Fitment, and Handling
Overall Impressions and Final Conclusion

I bought these coils from 7L AutoSport and my interaction with them has yet to be anything short of excellent. They are a smaller company (I believe there are only 2 of them, both younger guys just starting out) so they can get a bit backed up, but they have always come through with anything and everything they said they would and have always answered any question I have posed to them. I would recommend them to anyone looking around for performance parts, because their customer service is excellent and they will work with each individual to ensure that they exceed expectations with any purchase.

**R3V** · 03-05-2012

Part 1 - Unboxing, Install, and Initial Impressions

These coils come well boxed and wrapped. Each coil is wrapped individually, with packing foam to keep everything from moving. They come with:

2 Front, 2 Rear coils
2 sets of adjustment "spanners" I believe is the term.
Brake Line Brackets
Instructions
Stickers (Because we all love stickers)
4 Dampening knobs

My specifications are:

Upgrade to Swift Springs, for only a few extra hundered this is entierly worth it.
9k front and 8k rear
As I bought these during the group buy, they are a custom gunmetal color which sets the blue swifts off quite nicely and matches my car very well.

Pulling these out for the first time, I was immediately impressed with the quality, fit, and finish. Everything feels extremely well made, and looks fantastic. The tophats all around feel thick and sturdy, as do the springs, collars, and perches. What really impressed me initially was the bottom "boots" that attach the coilover to the knuckle. These are 1 solid piece of aluminum with not a weld in sight, and feel extremely solid. This is also the source of my only complaint with these coils, because since they are one solid piece with no welding whatsoever Fortune opted to add brackets that attach to the bolts on the knuckle to secure the brake lines. They did this in lieu of welding tabs directly to the boot because they wanted no compromises in the performance offered.

When install day came around, myself and 2 friends set ourselves to the task of getting these bad boys installed. What's excellent for the purposes of this review is both of those individuals have BC's themselves, and I helped one of them install his only a few weeks prior to receiving these. As BC's are the closest competitor in terms of price, it worthwhile to note the consensus between the 3 of us is that these are a much higher quality coil and that they were both extremely impressed with the 500's, especially when I told them it was only a $100.00 price difference for the base model. They had assumed they were much, much more expensive.

Adjectives used when showing these to my friends (because I found their impressions quite funny):

Diesel
Boss
Awesome
Legit
Solid
Tough
#BecauseRacecar

Put Anti-Seize on EVERYTHING. Perches, on the threads under the bottom boot, under the collars, knuckle bolts, etc.

Install is straightforward and very simple. Anyone can do this in the driveway with a few hours spare time. This can be done alone, but it can be quite difficult to get the tophat into the mounting position and get the screws on while holding the coilover with one arm in the wheel well so having a buddy is definitely preferable. These coils do not come pre-tensioned, you you will need to measure the spring and then tighten it an additional 1/4 of an inch. I didn't tighten mine enough, and as a result the spring has a bit of movement on the perch causing the occasional binding noise. The most difficult part is re-aligning the knuckle to fit back into the boot of the coil. My tip for this is take a spare jack, and use it to lift the wheel hub assembly back up into position. This takes some time to get everything aligned correctly, but don't worry it will all fit together nice and snug. Be sure to tighten every single bolt down as much as possible.

My initial drive with these I set all 4 coils at 6 notches from full hard for a consistent break-in. Now as I already said, I didn't quite tension mine enough so they were quite loud initially. There will be some noise from these as they break in, but if it seems much too loud go back and make sure everything is tightened and tensioned correctly.

Driving around on these after my alignment (nothing special since I adjusted for stock height to make it through winter) I notice a vast improvement in feedback from the road. Now I'm currently riding on snow tires, so I'm sure I am not feeling all the feedback that these have to offer. This is my first experience driving regularly on a set of coilovers, having only had springs on my last few cars. I am extremely impressed with both how well these translate feeling and feedback to the driver without making the ride unbearable. I really like how these ride, and the 9K/8K setup suggested by T3h_Clap is spot on for a daily driven car that will see a fair amount of track days.

Overall Initial Likes/Dislikes:

Like

Excellent build quality.
Fantastic Ride improvement with great feedback and a much more planted feeling, even on my pillow like snow tires. I am really looking forward to putting my summer performance wheels/tires on and really getting into what these can do.
Very user friendly installation and adjustment.

Dislike

The brake line brackets. There are other brands of coils that do not want to weld a bracket to the boot of the coil, so they supply vehicle specific tabs to secure the lines and I feel that it is an area of improvement for Fortune. The tabs supplied do work, and are secured by the top bolt on the knuckle but because they are sort of a "one size fits all" application it feels cheap which is something that took away from my first impression. I just feel like a bit better quality bracket is needed.
Noisy break in. If you're like me and new(er) to the more difficuly DIY aspect of performance cars, it can be unnerving to hear the amout of noise these make intially. As I already stated, most of the noise way my own fault for not properly locking everything down. Just be aware they will make some noise initially during the break in, and be sure to tighten everything down as much as possible.

Overall I am very impressed at both the quality and value of these coilovers. As I stated above they are a direct competitor to BC's. While I do like BCs because at their price point they are both accesible and do the job I feel like for not much more the 500's are a vast improvement. he build quality is much improved, and the ride offers much improvement.

I'm going to hold off on my final verdict until I can get a few track days and some back road experience with my summer set up, but for now I'd say for the price these cannot be beat.

**R3V** · 03-05-2012

This is a brief setup, but my ride height is set and won't be going much lower (The coils can go much much lower, my preference is this height however).