Alright, i understand that when you lower your car, the camber of the car is changed right? And the inside of the tyres wear faster than the outsides. Doesnt thing mean that the grip of the tyres are comprimised, since there is less contact patch?

Another thing, i would like to lower my car however i have heard from friends that when lowering a car on stock shox, the shox will wear down much faster and will need to be replaced. If this is true, how would you compare the wear of the shox with lowering springs and stock springs? (given normal street driving)

I know there must be many factors in which that can influence different factors, such as the amount of drop, but please someone just clear a couple things up for me, and help me decide whether to drop the car or not? Since i the stock ride height, and fender gaps do not bother me that much.

Thanks so much

 

Yes, lowering your car will increase your negative camber. This, however, isn't always a bad thing. The key is the find a perfect compromise for you. If your tires are at 0 degrees, prependicular to the ground, straightline grip would be great, but cornering traction will be compromised and the tires will wear faster on the outside. If you have too much negative camber, relative to your intended use, you will compromise straight line traction and quickly wear off the inside of your tires while not fully benefitting in the corners either. A good starting point for sports driving is to set the front at -1.5 and rear and -2 and further adjust to your liking.


If you are not lowering your car too much, or using too high of spring rates, the stock Showas will last you quite a while. On the other hand, if your car is slammed on stiff springs alone, the shocks aren't working at their optimal working range anymore, and are worked harder by they stiffer springs, therefore reducing their lives. Don't forget that "slamming" a car does more harm than good in terms of performance of a stock suspension because the suspensions aren't at there preferred working range anymore and alignments will get all wacky with the slightest of suspension movements causing things such as bump steer.

 

Thanks JL, you always reply to posts!! so helpful!!

what do you mean by -2 and -1.5??

What would be your suggestion to ideal lowering, with minimal uneven wear on tyres and shox, but offers best grip.

Whats the different between the major brands?

kg/mm
spoon
eibach
H&R

 

Bear with me here, I'll try to describe what those numbers mean, despite my poor English.

Looking at your car either from the front or back, you should see that the wheel/tires are not perfectly perpendicular to the front like |---|. Instead, they look more like /---\. That is negative camber. The -1.5 and -2.0 means the angle between the / and the |.

I'd say a drop of around 1" should be a good compromise between performance and durability. Give the springs two weeks to settle, then head to the alignment shop and have the set your from to -1.5 and rear to -2.0. You can fine tune your alignment after seeing how the tires are wearing, and whether the car feels good to you or not.

I personally like the kg/mm springs as they usually work well with the stock shocks and are fine tuned for their applications. The Spoon progressives seem a little on the soft side. Eibach is not bad I heard but I don't have any experience with them other than on European cars, and H&R is mainly for show.

 

I have neuspeeds and they drop 1.25 aprox....I think they are awesome for the price......I believe the KG/MM are about 1.4 aprox drop and they have a rather high spring rate so the ride is gonna be mighty bumpy in Vancouver.....so shocks are definitely gonna go bye bye very soon with the KG/MM.....never the less they are awesome springs....you might want to consider the HKS ones but they are fairly pricey too......

 

KG/MM Race works very well, but the dampers will start to deteriorate after a year or two. KG/MM sports are not as stiff, and doesn't drop as much so the shocks will last longer.

 

Let's say you dont drop the car and run stock springs. How long would the shocks last? opposed to using other springs?

 

it's hard to say.......it all depends on the kinds of roads you drive on and how fast you drive over those bad surfaced roads.......put it this way....if the roads here were like the ones in Germany all flat and smooth your shocks will last you a long time but if the roads were like gigantic 2 feet potholes all the way then your shocks won't last very long.....it's the amount of stress that you are putting on your shocks. For normal driving I'd say the shocks will last longer than the amount of time you're gonna keep the car so don't worry.

 

Springs: Probably not
Shocks: Most likely

 

I just learned that the reason why I am getting such excellent tire wear is because my camber is not to factory spec. My rears look like they will last in excess of 40000KM.