I purchased my 2002 s2000 a little over a year ago and I'm tired of how low it is to the ground and constantly bottoming it out. Also my front fender is pretty much toast from scraping over the year I've had it.

When I purchased it, the guy said he had "lowered it on skunk springs." I looked under the car and it looks like all he did was switch out the springs on the OEM shocks. Is it very difficult to switch those back to stock again?

The other thing that worries me is when I took it in to get aligned, they told me they could not adjust the toe in/out or camber or anything and that they were already at the "max" allowable by the hardware configuration. I wasn't sure what that meant or if by going back to stock springs will allow for better adjustment. I just want it back to the way it rolled off the line.

Thanks in advance for any advice. I can always jack it up and take some pictures if that may help identify what has been done to it. Just let me know what I would need to take a few shots of.

 

You may just want to buy an entire stock suspension assembly to replace yours with. There are typically a few for sale in the marketplace. You are going to have to pull the whole strut assembly out either way and if the springs were too aggressive you may have blown shocks. DIY is not too bad, just search on here there are a few.

What were your alignment specs? Did they say why they couldn't adjust it? May want to try having someone more knowledgeable look at it, something could be bent.

 

All you need is stock springs. As limbo mentioned, you might want to do shocks while you are at it unless you know there is low mileage on them. You can usually find a complete assembly in good condition in the used classifieds. It makes the install much easier when you swap in the complete assembly, otherwise you will have to take the springs off the shocks which is a little more work.

As for the alignment, they probably got it as close to stock as possible. Based on the suspension geometry, as you lower the car it increases negative camber. You should be fine at stock height. The following numbers are for reference only. Let's say at stock height you are at -0.5 camber with a range of -1.5 to 0. After lowering, you are now at -1.5 with a range of -2.5 to -1.0. If you wanted a stock alignment they would "max" out the adjustment at -1.0. I'd focus more on toe, most people run 0 toe front and just a hint of toe in the rear (0.20 ish total).

 

Have you considered a good set of coilovers, keep it dropped up to an 1inch over stock. I found this a good compromise over the stock suspension 4w drive ride height. Alignment remains within the limits as well.

 

They gave me a pretty print-out at the mechanic's shop, and luckily I saved it. This is old, but is what I currently have for alignment:

 

Also using a tape measure, I measured that my front is 5 inches off of the ground (measured from the bottom of the front fender to the pavement) and my rear is almost double (bottom of rear bumper to pavement) at 10 inches. I looked up stock height and I'm WAY lower then that right now.

 

The front looks good, basically stock. The rear has WAY too much toe, you need to address that for sure. It is going to kill your tire tread life and give you twitchy handling. I can understand them not being able to get camber in spec but they should be able to properly adjust toe. Of course, if you are going back to stock there is no point messing with the alignment until you get the new parts on but I would make it a priority.

 

Well, by putting the stock springs back on the car, should that allow them to fix the toe? Or do you think that maybe something else was heavily modified?

 

I would say go to a different alignment shop next time. Even if the car is dumped to the ground, they should have been able to fix your rear toe issue. I've been very low on my coilovers and had 0 rear toe before, so its definitely possible to do better than what they did. Sounds to me like they just got lazy and wanted you off their alignment rack. They didn't even try to touch anything in the rear at all, the specs are exactly the same.

Just swapping back to stock springs will be a bit more work as you will have to rent a spring compressor from Autozone (its free to do so) and use it to remove the spring from the strut assembly. Just depends on if you want to spend the extra couple hours to save some cash. I have some OEM AP1 springs lying around you can have for cheap if you want to swap just the springs over. It will take you the better part of a Saturday to do, but there is a pretty comprehensive DIY on this site on how to do it.

 

Here is the DIY I used when I was installing my Koni shocks w/ lowering springs... Your steps will be nearly identical except for the mods that this guy makes to get the Koni's to fit. https://www.s2ki.com/s2000/topic/303...-installation/