Performance Suspension - How Low Can You Go?

If you read the earlier post on how springs work, you may have an idea of what type of performance suspension you want from your aftermarket springs. Lowering Springs will give your car an aggressive, sporty look, but they also have a shorter travel distance upon impact, so they need to be stiffer. The shorter, stiffer springs tend to leave you with a bumpy ride, so where is the compromise?

With shorter springs, you can't have the same smooth ride you get from stock springs. Stock springs are longer and can travel a greater distance upon impact, so they can be softer without producing coil bind (coil bind is where the spring supresses completely, binding the spring completely closed). The softer spring allows the car to glide over imperfections in the road, where the stiffer spring transfers a lot more energy to the vehicle upon impacts.

The balance here is to keep the spring as long as possible while getting the look you perfer. A drop of 1 - 1 1/2 inches will give the car a much better look, but won't sacrifice too much driveability. If you don't mind a stiffer ride, you can go as much as a 2 - 3 inch drop. Be be aware of curb hights, etc. when making these changes, because you may find yourself cracking a bumper cover if you aren't used to parking the lower vehicle.

Another thing to keep in mind when purchasing your lowering springs or racing suspension is the height of any aftermarket body kits you intend to install. These body kits usually give the vehicle less ground clearance, and adding that with shorter springs can have an undesirable effect. Also, any undercar lighting may be in danger if the vehicle becomes too low. Take these things into consideration when choosing your lowering springs, and you should end up with the results to are looking for.

Lowering Springs and Drivability

Springs Effect on Drivability

Do you want to add some aftermarket lowering springs to your car, but aren't sure how it will affect performance? Let's look at how springs work.

Spring Stiffness
Relative to its shock absorbing function, the spring must be stiff enough to prevent full compression or elongation in large bumps and potholes. However, it must also be soft enough maintain good contact with the road. The softer the spring the better the road contact over bumpy surfaces and the smoother the ride. However, the stiffer the spring, the better the resistance to bottoming out on large bumps. Most factory springs offer a compromise of handling and smoothness associated with everyday driving.

Wheel Travel & Body Roll
In order to handle bumps and dips, the entire wheel assembly is designed to have a certain amount of vertical travel length from full extension to compression. The rougher the road, the more wheel travel is needed, and the longer the overall spring length needs to be. Factory passenger cars are designed to function well over a broad range of conditions, and the suspension system in particular must be prepared to compensate for potholes, freeway expansion joints, rutted gravel roads, and other less than ideal road surfaces. Therefore, a street car is designed with quite a bit of suspension travel length. In a high performance sports car, manufacturers assume a more limited range of road surfaces, and design in less wheel travel by a of couple inches. In the typical sports car or sports sedan of the Mustang, Camaro, Eclipse, Integra, and BMW 3 types, the suspension is a little better than the general sedan, but it's really not a great deal different.

Racing Springs
In racing, we can assume a certain degree of ideal conditions, or at least more ideal than public roads. In a stock street car, even notoriously "bumpy" race courses feel glass smooth compared to most public roads. In these conditions, the purpose of the spring can be focused to maintain maximum and consistent contact of the tire with the relatively much smoother road surface. Under these conditions, very little wheel assembly travel is required. The spring can be optimized for smaller wheel travel conditions. For example, a CART or Formula 1 race car driven on smooth courses may only have 1/4 to 1/2" of total suspension travel!

How does wheel travel impact handling? Though the wheel assembly travels up and down, it does not do so on a linear path. The wheel assembly is at some point fixed, and the wheel assembly actually travels in an arc. Whether the body stays put, and the wheel travels (through bumps), or the wheel stays put and the body travels (body roll), this has impact on the camber angle of the wheel which changes the tire contact patch shape.

Therefore, for racing conditions, limiting the wheel travel distance is a desirable thing. For street cars, the use of lowering springs (shorter and stiffer) is one method to reduce wheel travel. In extreme cases, it will also be necessary to use shorter shocks.

Roll Stiffness
So far we have used bumps in the road to illustrate how springs behave. Springs are also acted upon by the forces of acceleration, braking, and cornering. The momentum of the vehicle body in cornering, braking, and acceleration transfers into the springs causing compression and elongation. This is an easy to see effect of weight transfer as it results in visible body roll -- both the side-to-side roll we're mostly familiar with during cornering, but also front-to-back roll -- particularly the "nose dive" under hard braking.

Body roll by itself is not necessarily bad. If the four tires remain flat on the road surface with balanced downforce, who cares whether the car body is parallel to the road or not (aerodynamics aside). What body roll does though is change the angles of the suspension components to the wheel assembly (which we call suspension geometry).

This is pretty much the same thing as we discussed above with wheel travel, except this is from the opposite perspective. With the wheel on the fixed plane of a smooth road, the body now travels, and causes the wheel assembly to travel in the arc we described. This changes the camber and tire contact patch particularly of those tires which are unloaded and the suspension elongates.

Aside from bump absorption, the spring also contributes to the roll stiffness of the car--the ability to resist dive under braking, squat during acceleration, and body roll during corning. The anti-roll bars also play a roll in this, and the two combined create the total roll stiffness of the car. Stiffer springs will resist body roll more, reduce change in the suspension geometry, and maintain a more consistent tire patch size.

To purchase springs for you car, visit www.majesticmodifications.com!