Customer Review of the TPC Racing Cayman Stage 4(JRZ) Suspension Program

First off, thanks to Mike Levitas for helping me and SO many others on track this weekend. He’s incredibly generous with his time and knowledge. For two days he was jumping in and out of cars in every run group. GT3 Cup cars to Subaru wagons, Black drivers to Green drivers, didn’t matter to him, only that you wanted to learn. Congrats to Harr for his promotion! Awesome driving! We missed you Sunday.

My mistake was riding with Mike the 1st session of the 1st day. I hadn’t been to VIR before and should have gotten familar with the track before I asked him to ride with me. But it was still awesome.

JRZ’s……WOW! It’s hard to describe and I am not technical enough to explain the results, so here’s how it FELT.

One benefit of having Mike in the 1st session was having him setup a baseline for my JRZ’s. I immediately felt better control of the car. The rear end was putting down power without even a slightest hint of coming loose. I had some mild understeer so we made a couple of front rebound adjustments. The change, to my surprise, was easy to feel. It actually caused understeer in some corners that didn’t have it before; Mike predicted it before we made the change. So we changed it back but this time adjusted the compression. Understeer became very minimal but now the car was doing something I hadn’t really felt before, it was sliding (with just a slight lift), i.e. evenly sliding/rotating with little effort. It’s hard to explain but the car was super tight and planted but at the same time could be tossed around VERY controllably with throttle and brake modulation. This was huge for this track. The technical sections require you to roatate and point the car in order to keep your speed up.

This ability to slide the car was different for me. Previously I had to be somewhat aggressive to rotate the car. After just a couple of session with this setup I had awesome control with little effort. This lack of effort quickly built my confidence and reduced my fear when I pushed the edge of adhesion.

Thanks to some great instruction in Potomac PCA, rotation is something that I had been working on, so either I just figured it out or the JRZ’s made it A LOT easier. In any case, the car is extremely stable in & out of corners, stable at speed, stable over rumble, stable under braking and very controllable.

On the street? Not as bad as I thought they would be. I borrowed a trailer for the 5 1/2 hour drive to VIR, so I haven’t driven long distances with them on. But crusing around town they’re a bit harsh but not unbearable.

I had some buyer’s remorse going into this weekend thinking I wouldn’t be able to really appreciate these shocks at my experience level. Now I couldn’t be happier (of course it helps to have a pro driver on hand to setup your car). If you’re building a track car I would highly recommend these shocks.