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me and my metro,
good job with the lowering, it looks better (I own a stock height '96 2 door). With less effective frontal area now, the improved mileage your getting isn't a huge surprise to me at least, thanks for reporting some real numbers on a car like mine.
I am not sure if you know what I'm talking about, but alot of cars experience 'bump steer' after being lowered.
Do you notice anything like that now that your Metro has been lowered?
My Metro is already 'twichy' out on the hiway, I think the result of not enough factory caster, for my liking awayway. Susuki had it right I guess, which on one hand little caster makes it easy for some little old lady to turn into a parking space at 1 mph, but on the other at the expense of high speed stability. I want to lower my car, but adding bump steer to an already twitchy car would drive me crazy.
I'm glad you cut the bump stops down, good call. I lowered my truck back in the the late '80's with these things they call 'lower blocks'. It turned out to be a handful to drive, rebounding off the bumpstops made me regret lowing it, until I cut 1-1/2 inches off the factory bump stops, which cured the problem.
For anyone questioning the act of cutting springs versus buying different ones: cutting any coil spring, reducing it's unwound length, by definition, increases it's overall stiffness. This point is often misunderstood (it's not intuitive) but it is fact.
I can't remember the formula, but if you think of a coil spring as a simple bending beam (like a fishing rod) <that just happens to be coiled up to save space> you can imagine in your mind's eye that the shorter beam, is a little stiffer than the longer one. Said another way, the same force applied to the longer beam, moves the beam further, easier if you will. Because of leverage and that same force having a greater mechanical advantage. Remove 1 coil from a 6 coil spring, and it gets stiffer by some amount (1/6 maybe?)
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