my friend told me coil over is what brings the car back to its height

spring absorbs the shock from hitting bumps or whatever, and coilover prevents the car from jumping back up from spring. Coilover is what slowly brings car back up to its height after hitting a bump on the road.

was he right?


if he was, can you buy different springs to lower the car on stock coilovers? or do you always have to buy coilover and spring together to lower or stiffen the car?


can you adjust the coilover heights whenever you want?


Why do people get aftermarket coilovers? I don't understand how it can improve your car except to lower it, which I think spring alone can do(am i right or wrong?)

 

He was wrong.

Springs controls the amount of suspension movement and dampers control the movement.

You can either change springs or get adjustable coilovers to alter your ride-height.

Good aftermarket coilovers have matching springs and dampers that are adjustable to suit different conditions. Changing springs alone rarely improves handling because stock shocks are usually too weak to handle the higher springs rates, not to mention many aftermarket springs have messed up spring rates.

 

I think there's some terminology confusion here. Here's a pic of some coilovers:



The tubular structures inside of the springs are the dampers (aka shock absorbers) that JL9000's referring to. At some point in the relatively recent past, dampers with adjustable spring perches (the interface between the damper and the spring, which dictates static ride height), when sold together with matched concentric springs, became known as coilovers.

This is too complicated a subject to explain here (do a Google search), but suffice it to say that both spring and damping rates significantly affect handling. Aftermarket dampers tend to have stiffer and more consistent damping, and many of them allow damping to be adjusted to match track conditions or personal preference. Simply lowering a car without making any other suspension adjustments often degrades a car's handling.

Steve

 

oh so both tubular structure inside, and the spring work to absorb the shock from bumps on streets, and tubular structure is the damping part.

the damping part can be adjusted with whatever speed you want it to jump back with spring after it absorbs shocks.

the damping part can also lower the car, and that makes stiffer rides.

and it is recommended that you get the whole coilover, not just springs, because that will degrade the handling of the car, right?