If you have lowering springs, I have a question...

[Shmi]

Thanks for clicking.

I've always purchased coilovers for my past cars (GTI, E46 M3), but honestly, I'd always set it to a height and then never adjust it, and never adjusted damping after finding a good setup. So for this car, I figure I may as well just go with some lowering springs on stock shocks.

I like the stock setup because it feels like when you're driving a nice road and you're on the ball, like you're just pouring the car into the corners. I love it. I have no problem with the feel or performance of the stock setup. However, I'd like to make the car look a little better by reducing wheel gap, and bringing the center of gravity lower sounds good, but performance trumps looks, and I don't want to go that route if it makes the dynamics suffer. Clearance is not an issue where I live, and this car will never see a lick of snow driving.

Handling and feel are paramount in this car and I absolutely don't want to ruin it, so for those of you with lowering springs:

How happy are you with a set of lowering springs? Be honest now!
Has it messed up the feel of the car?
Are lowering springs OK with the stock shocks?
Is the ride significantly better, worse? Or slightly better/worse?
What springs are you running?
Would you do anything differently?

Thanks ahead of time.

 

[Nitro-Si]

I'm using H&R springs and while they do drop the car a fair amount they are a fair bit firmer.
Yes they've messed with the feel of the car for me, so much so that I'm going to try my first set of coilovers....KW ST-XTA in the hope that the damping and ride quality are improved, it's just too harsh for me at the moment, though to be far some of that will be down to the 40 profile tyres
My chosen tuner has a set of the KW coilovers on his FiST so I'm gonna take that for a drive before making my final decision.

 

[rodmoe]

I have used lowering springs in the past with mixed results depending on the shock.. If you don't mind the ride hieght I would start with a good set of adjustable shock and dial in the ride. I went the BC route and they are not really true coil overs just a different set of shock and springs used in the factory positions. Am so glad the factory shocks are gone I hated the bouncy choppy ride induced by the spring thaw..

 

[adamatlic]

I have Eibachs, the car is 4 months old and 4k miles, the springs have been on for at least 3 months of those. I love the look, but I feel it's a little too low and takes away from the turn-in. It's the same thing that happens to Subaru's so we always install a roll center correction kit when we do suspension on them to correct for that. Hopefully someone will have a correction kit for these cars as it's needed once they're lowered quite a bit. As for the ride, it didn't really get any worse, but it also didn't improve it either. There's sections of highway on my commute that get annoying which isn't helped by all the road construction we have going on. I would be interested in going for a Euro coilover such as KW or AST personally. I just haven't got fed up enough to actually do it ;-)

 

[BlueBomber]

I have used lowering springs in the past with mixed results depending on the shock.. If you don't mind the ride hieght I would start with a good set of adjustable shock and dial in the ride. I went the BC route and they are not really true coil overs just a different set of shock and springs used in the factory positions. Am so glad the factory shocks are gone I hated the bouncy choppy ride induced by the spring thaw..

So basically we've worked out that the bouncy choppy jarring ride is directly the fault of the shocks?

So by throwing the junk shocks away and putting in some decent ones I will have corrected the ride issue my lady complains about?
No need for coilovers to fix the problem? No need to go down to 16 or 15 to get rid of the jarring ride?
yayyyyy

the ride is harsh. Over a 600 mile trip to UT in the car the entire day, my friend's fitbit logged 7000+ steps... we hardly walked. that's bad.

 

[rodmoe]

Pretty much the first thing I heard from the racer crowd was the marginal shocks.
The first time I drive the car after winter got hit and the frost heaved the roads I knew the short wheelbase and limited shocks cause the bouncy house ride .. Like I said if you like the ride height save a buck on springs and get a good set of shocks.. Now it's up to you to say what is a good set .. Everyone has their own personal faves ..

 

[Shmi]

Interesting, thanks for the opinions. I guess I'll be holding off on springs, but may look into replacing the shocks with a quality set. At least I could improve the ride a bit.

 

[BlueBomber]

Well Rodmoe that's a good point.

Since I will probably end up with a set of rebranded Eibachs on the car eventually (not my choice)... I'm wondering what a good option for a primarily street use shock - in a place where despite it never snowing or anything, the roads are fallin apart.

 

[rodmoe]

People like Blistein, KYB, Koni, to name a quick few I am sure other will chime in with their thoughts and experiences or at least I hope so.

 

[iso100]

Bilstein Sports are nice and tight if you don't need adjustable dampening. Koni Yellows can be revalved by the company if you need increased stiffening. When I ran #600 rear springs on my VW Scirocco autocross car we had them revalved.

 

[iso100]

Forgot to mention the Konis are rebound adjustable.

 

[Nitro-Si]

KW's....adjustable height (obviously) but also adjustable damping and camber

 

[iso100]

I had a set of KW Variant 2 coil overs on my 1999 Passat. Good stuff!

 

[CanadianST]

I'm also interested in what everyone has to say here. I like the handling and don't mind the bumpy ride (had a jeep with leaf springs on 4 corners before) but would like it slightly lower. Had springs and stock shocks on my last car and it made a nice difference but then it didn't handle the best anyway.

 

[iso100]

The suspension feels so good right now I would be afraid to go with any aftermarket suspension that hasn't been painstakingly tuned to not mess up the dynamics the ST team created.

Lower is great for aesthetics but not necessarily for performance.

 

[Shmi]

The suspension feels so good right now I would be afraid to go with any aftermarket suspension that hasn't been painstakingly tuned to not mess up the dynamics the ST team created.

Lower is great for aesthetics but not necessarily for performance.

Agreed, that's why I wanted opinions. I really don't want to mess with it and end up with a car that isn't quite right. This car is dynamically wonderful as is, and while I've done suspension mods for looks in the past, I can live with some wheel gap for a better driving experience in this instance.

 

[FineTooned]

For a more compliant ride while retaining most of the stock setup's handling, I was just wondering how stock Fiesta SES replacement struts might do with the stock ST springs. It is probably a bad idea for some reason or other, but I don't know what those reasons might be.

 

[iso100]

You really want the valving of the dampers tuned to the stiffness of the springs. If you have stiff springs but weak dampening, the car will bounce excessively and the ride will be worse.

 

[FineTooned]

Yes. That makes sense. And I wouldn't want the ride to be any bouncier than it already is.

I just thought it might be comparable to using Eibach springs on stock struts which I've done in the past without any ill effects. Heck, back when I was young and dumb(er) and broke, I even ran aftermarket springs with a couple rungs cut off on stock struts and didn't run into any ride problems. And I know cutting rungs off a spring greatly increases it's firmness and I would not recommend doing it. Granted, that was on an old, high mileage Datsun 240z, but still.

But I suppose the difference between the stock ST springs and stock SES struts may be much greater than aftermarket lowering springs and the stock struts. And I'm not up for being a Guinea pig with my car these days. So this was more of an armchair-tuner mental exercise.

 

[BlueBomber]

it's a problem I am wrestling with myself cos it's the bounciness my lady complains about, complaining about the jolt hurting her boobs