Monthly Archives: March 2010

GARAGE SALE 3.28.2010

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We are having our second ever Garage Sale on Sunday, March 28th. Event will be held at TEIN USA Headquarters in Downey, CA. Mackin Industries and Carbonetic will also be in attendance and selling selected items at heavy discount.

TEIN will be selling selected applications and quantities of:

TEIN – coilovers, lowering springs, performance bar and of course TEIN novelty goods.

DEFI – select gauges

Fujitsubo – select Legalis R and RM01A exhaust systems

Carbing – select products

AutoTech Interiors – gauge pods

Certain items are marked off up to 50%. We will be selling limited quantities of select “popular” application coilovers and lowering springs.

A complete list of Garage Sale items from TEIN, Mackin, and Carbonetic will be released on March 19th. You can see the list by visiting www.tein.com/garagesale/2010.html or click HERE.


Come early as quantities are limited. Check back on this blog for updates all the way up to and during the Garage Sale.

2010 HONDA CR-Z Released in Japan

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TEIN Japan recently took delivery on their newest demo car which is the 2010 Honda CR-Z. They have already begun product development and are planning to release the Mono FLEX coilovers as well as High.Tech lowering springs for the Japanese Domestic market.

The CR-Z is “supposed” to be a Sport Hybrid. Comes with a 1.5L Hybrid engine which makes 84KW @ 6,000 (about 113 HP). The weighs in at 1130-1180kg depending on options which is about 2491-2601lbs. Does not sound sporty in comparison to other US vehicles but I guess we’ll have to wait to test drive one.

Front suspension is a MacPherson Strut layout which has the benefit of being lower in cost, having less moving parts and leaves plenty of space for the drive axle.

Rear is a Torsion Beam layout. As you can see the spring and shock is separately mounted. This has become a common rear suspension layout for many manufacturers due to relative low cost and ability to retain more interior space.

This is one of the hottest cars in Japan right now and TEIN is working long hours to finish the development quickly to meet the huge consumer demand. There is already a large back order for the vehicle from Honda.

TEIN Japan is also testing the automatic version.

Once the car is released in the US we will try to locate a test vehicle and begin our own development/ testing processes. TEIN products are developed for the specific region in which they are sold to best match consumer demands. In most cases the US spec products are more aggressive in spring rate and valving as well as drop range.

Gymkhana driving technique

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Over the past 2 years the word Gymkhana has been made famous in the US by Ken Block in his two Subaru STIs. We think Ken is an awesome driver and his videos are incredibly entertaining. Both of Ken’s Gymkhana cars were prepared by TEIN Authorized Dealer – Crawford Performance and use custom valved TEIN SRC coilovers.

Our Japanese staff found some awesome videos from Japan of Gymkhana competition and driving technique. We found the videos to be interesting in terms of vehicle setup and driver skill. Check them out.

First Video. All Japan Gymkhana Championship multiple time champion Tetsuya Yamano in a DC5 showing some precision driving technique. He makes it look too easy.

Second Video. Amateur video taken of some of the AWD Gymkhana competitors. Check out the acceleration and tight radius of the spin turns. According to class rules the engines and turbos are pretty much stock. Most cars have about 400HP and tons of torque with a lot of emphasis on throttle response.

TEIN Japan has supported various drivers in the All Japan Gymkhana Championship from 1997 – current with Championships in various classes. Most of our supported drivers use our Gymkhana specific Type HT coilovers which are setup specifically for vehicle agility via spring rates and valving (Example – HT for DC2 has spring rates of 22kg front and 7kg rear).