Affordable way to lower your vehicle

[Christ]

I never cut springs, I just chain the vehicle down and heat up a couple coils to weaken them, then leave the vehicle chained down until they cool.

Does the Tempo have coil overs? I can't recall... One of my Civics, I dropped it 40mm with 400 front and 330 rear spring rates (slightly higher than stock) and the struts were blown 2 days later, fluid leaking from them. They were also the OEM struts, from 1989, and I was running 205/40R16 tires, which could explain alot as well. I have seen new struts blow the seals from drop springs, though.

[Frank Lee]

Tempos have struts all around.

I suppose it's a YMMV thing, if your model doesn't have as much travel to begin with, it has less to spare i.e. 2" "lost" is a bigger deal. Tempos have pretty generous travel for a small car.

Cutting is better than heating, I've read. The temper isn't messed up.

I've read of guys that really wanted that slammed look that removed the jounce dampers for a bit more "clearance". I'd imagine they experienced a lot of strut failures. I'd think even with the donuts in, if they were hit up against often and hard enough, that would wreck the strut too. Combine that with mag adverts and adverts disguised as articles with the intent of pushing new aftermarket product and voila- "all stock struts will fail with dropped springs"- it becomes urban legend.

[Christ]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

Tempos have struts all around.

I suppose it's a YMMV thing, if your model doesn't have as much travel to begin with, it has less to spare i.e. 2" "lost" is a bigger deal. Tempos have pretty generous travel for a small car.

Cutting is better than heating, I've read. The temper isn't messed up.

I've read of guys that really wanted that slammed look that removed the jounce dampers for a bit more "clearance". I'd imagine they experienced a lot of strut failures. I'd think even with the donuts in, if they were hit up against often and hard enough, that would wreck the strut too. Combine that with mag adverts and adverts disguised as articles with the intent of pushing new aftermarket product and voila- "all stock struts will fail with dropped springs"- it becomes urban legend.

Yes, cutting is better than heating, but cold cutting is better than torch cutting, as well. (Same reason.) I've never experienced a failure with heated springs, but I always heat one end of the spring until the coils are compressed, so it takes them out of the equation altogether, leaving the usable coils tempered as normal.

I'm not sure about other cars, but on my Civic, the strut mounts can be modified to move the strut back up where it should be after lowering, and regain lost suspension travel.

The modification leaves the on-shaft bump stops in place, as well, by moving them up into the newly created area in the mount.
If you need a visual, I can try to find one for ya.