Reducing ride height by "resetting" coil springs

[Otto]

Heating may cause temper problems with the metal, so best to go with chop saw, etc.. You could wrap it next to the cut with a strip of cloth, soaked in cutting fluid or oil, which would simultaneously lubricate the cut and keep the metal cool.

Cut springs is an ongoing controversy on the BMW forums, with purists claiming the only solution is buying aftermarket springs, yet others who've cut a coil or two off the stock springs mostly (but not all) saying the ride and handling was as good or better than pre-cut. Consensus view is never to cut with a torch, due to temper issues weakening the metal.

I'll probably cut my springs as noted above, see how it works, and then go to aftermarket lowering springs if needed.

[some_other_dave]

Originally Posted by mwebb

it is very common
for me to see lowered cars with smoked tires , smoked on the inside ... without the follow up of correctly adjusting the camber back to where the specification shows that it belongs

In general, the toe angle (which is adjustable on the front of all cars that I know of, and adjustable to at least some extent on the rear of almost all) causes more problems than camber does. Unless you wind up with more than around 3 degrees of negative camber, you get fairly little extra wear.

I have about 15 years of driving on cars that have about 2 degrees negative camber (a bit more on the drive wheels, a bit less on the non-drive ones) in two different types of cars (two examples each); one with a MacPherson front and semi-trailing arm rear and one with double wishbones all the way around. Neither one exhibited more than a very little bit of "camber wear". I know people with more who also have not seen odd wear.

Toe-out can completely obliterate the inside edge of a tire. The tires that came on my first car of the four I mention above were shredded. The inside corners had been ground off to the point where the ends of the wires that make up the steel belts were sticking out of where the tread used to be! (I should have gotten it aligned when I bought the car.) The car didn't have much camber, but it had a lot of toe out. After the alignment, which set the rears up to toe-in slightly and gave me some negative camber, the wear was fine and the handling a whole lot better.

-soD

[Fr3AkAzOiD]

Originally Posted by Ladogaboy

As I understand it, by shortening the spring, the shock/damper stays at a more compressed state than it is designed for.

Thats what I have heard as well. Was looking into picking up this for my car.
Cobalt FE5 Struts and Shock with Pedder Spring Pkg TCSS - Crate Engine Depot
Then realised I would need to pay for an alignment and pay extra for a shim kit for the rear as my current one probably wouldn't work anymore.

$800 for lowering it would make it look better and get slightly better mpgs but would never pay for itself.

Then I hit a racoon a few weeks back but lucked out on no body damage and only needed to bang the radiator back into shape with a hammer and block of wood. Had I been 2 inches lower it could have caused a whole lot more damage to the car.

[Ladogaboy]

Yeah, I priced out lowering coils for my car as well, and it isn't cost effective for now. Given the price to buy, install, and align, I'm going to just going to save up to get a mid-range set of coilovers. I don't ever expect them to pay for themselves based on the mpg, but at least with coilovers, I can justify the expense for other reasons. :-)

[user removed]

How many on this thread have 60,000 hours experience working on cars. That was earning a living working on cars, and never spending a second in court explaining your methods of solving problems for thousands of people.

Race car drivers like negative camber for cornering. The springs on your car are most likely perfectly functional. If you want the car lower then take off 10-15% of the total spring length. You can test the vehicle by loading it to capacity to see the ride height you do not want to exceed by lowering.

While you have it apart replace the bump stops or you will wipe out the shocks. Even though they may look good they are probably old. Seen to many shock jobs ruined by not replacing the bump stops.

Now if you have to put some "performance" aftermarket shocks or springs on your car, and you can not be convinced otherwise, do your due diligence and thoroughly research the comments of those who have preceded you in that effort.

I never charged people for advice, I just wrote this exact same thing on their Repair Order so when they forgot the good advice and chose to ignore it, it was documented to protect me from their actions years later.

What is on your car has passed the test of time and will work just fine? You already paid for them when you bought the car, and if you are careful, and you do not carry max loads, you can accomplish your objective with some sweat equity. Stronger spring, lower ride height, new bump stops to preserve your existing struts, all for just the cost of the bump stops.

regards
Mech

[Ladogaboy]

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

Now if you have to put some "performance" aftermarket shocks or springs on your car, and you can not be convinced otherwise, do your due diligence and thoroughly research the comments of those who have preceded you in that effort.

I think the most important thing to take into account is that each person's needs are different. While cut springs might be fine for a daily, softly driven commuter vehicle, they might not be the best option for other applications. I guess Old Mechanic stated the golden rule: Do your homework.

[niky]

In my experience, simply cutting out the springs without considering the rest of the suspension isn't a great thing to do on modern "cheap" cars, because most run with dampers that are too soft to handle the extra stiffness and load of cut springs.

But then, my experience has been mostly with your common cheap Japanese compact, most of which are woefully under-damped. And I drive over really bad roads. Bad enough to have bent eight wheels over the last several years of driving (often at a very reasonable 50-60 mph... our highways are garbage). Cutting springs on these cars makes them ride like skateboards on bedsprings.

If you live in an area with glass-smooth roads and don't do any performance driving, cutting springs (provided you make sure your bump stops are okay, alignment doesn't suffer and you don't take a god-awful amount of spring off) may be okay, but for those who don't live in a perfect world, no. Not really.

And aftermarket springs? Sag? Not any worse than stock springs, and often less... unless you're buying the real cheap stuff, in which case, you're getting what you're paying for. Unfortunately, most aftermarket "lowering" springs are garbage. They lower the car too much and hasten the death of the stock dampers as badly as poorly cut springs. If you're lucky, you can find guides (such as exist on the Honda and Mazda boards) that will tell you which springs have what spring rates, but in most cases, you get zip.

There are other means of lowering the car, too. For instance, suspension changes between the B13 and B14 Sentras means you can use the B13 Sentra front struts on a B14 for about an inch or an inch-and-a-half lowering with no problems other than a slight increase to the Sentra's already considerable propensity to bottom out.

Some good parts scavenging and eBay trolling for "stock sports suspensions" for different variants of your car can achieve similar, if these are available.

[Vekke]

I will test the effect of lowering to fuel consumtion with spring clamps designed for the job. So I will clamp the springs lower heigth and test their effect on fuel consumtion. With clamps I do not mean clamps you use to compress the whole spring, but smaller similar system however.

Test will be done on smooth tarmac so suspension arent so heavily stressed in this test. I will try to get the ground clearance to 80mm which is mimimun in europe. If I can see a difference I migh buy new adjustable coilover suspension for my Lupo.

[MetroMPG]

Vekke - that will be very interesting!

Would you please reply this thread again even if you post a new thread? (I don't want to miss it.)

[Vekke]

First I will have to make the exhaust pipe to back, because it is the lowest point at the moment when it sits behind the front tire. ETA for this lowering test is about one month... I will post the effects propably just here and to my lupo thread.

PS, Yesterday I did some tuft testing and adjustment to my kammback spoiler and video of that will follow later. As I thought I could tilt the spoiler much more.