Idea to lower sho even more

[SHOman24v]

i was thinking......we know that the spindle pinches on the strut and it uses the tab on the strut as a guide for where you need to clamp the spindle to the strut. my idea is to cut the tab and reweld it up a inch more, in theroy lowering the car. if this was done you would have to see how much you could go before you start to hit the CV boot and if you have konis you cant do that much more due to the bolt at the bottom of the strut. yes this would cause camber issues but that is not a huge problem right now....if this was to be done, i'd move the front tabs up a inch and the rears up a half inch pending if it hit the cv boot...now in combination with intrax springs(which i perfer) i think you would have a pretty decent lowering job if all the tabs are straight....what do you all think of this idea...its sketchy right now but i think it could work

<small>[ September 21, 2003, 03:39 PM: Message edited by: SHOman24v ]</small>

 

[LOUDSHO92]

Thats common to do with coilovers, which will get your car even lower. I have a freind who needed to do that with his coilovers, well no one wanted to weld it. It took so long to find someone to do it. There are a lot of reliability and insurance issues involved with doing it. If that tab brakes there goes your suspension. You can only do it on konis because if they weld through there goes the shocks. It can work just good, just have to find some one to do it.

 

[Shoaz]

Another thing to be careful about with this idea is whether the spring perch will clear the top of the tire, front and rear.

 

[SHOman24v]

hmmm im wondering if i should do that to mine........

 

[SHOZ123]

Did this to my '97 two years ago. Don't bother with replacing the tabs. They are just for location purposes and offer little support.

 

[sdpatt]

Too low is just for show - not go.

 

[SHOman24v]

its not all for show, its for a lower center of gravity.....better handling

 

[viperrt450]

Yeah like Paul said the tab is just their for the location point. I keep thinking about doing this. You also don't want to go to far or the axles aren't going to be even with the tranny. My one friend with coilovers in a civic had his car to low and the axles tore up the tranny inside.

 

[AutoSHO]

I like the idea of dropping the strut and using a spring with less drop because it will give you more strut travel, which will translate to a better ride, while still allowing you to lower a car a bit for better looks. Ride height really doesnt have much do do with handling, especially on a street car, its all about damping, spring rates, etc.

<small>[ September 23, 2003, 11:28 PM: Message edited by: AutoSHO ]</small>

 

[Todd TCE]

Yea right.

So if the lower you go the better the car handles, then if it just rubs the road it's be 'bad fast' man!

Get a grip. Read a book. All this 'lower is so much better' is often more crap than fact.
All of it depends on so much you are not begining to even discuss that it's worth your time to understand it. While lowering it may lower the CG, the resulting trade offs in many other ares will more than negate the little gain you have here.

I love it that this same comment was made in the latest issue of GRM. Finally, someone has the balls to speak up in a magazine and debunk some of the garbage that too many people fall victim of. Hat's off to Tim Suddard for saying what many of us know already.

More shock travel may be the rusult of this change but if it doesn't bottom on the snubber now how the **** is it going to if there's no roll?!

Buy a copy, read it. Learn.

 

[SHOguy 92]

just get intrax lowering springs and some koni's. thats low enough any lower u'll start bottoming out. and ur ur truly worried about handling get front and rear strut tower bars, subframe connectors, and subframe bushings. subframe bushings will lower u another half an inch u should be happy with that thats an inch and a half of lowering in front and an inch and a quater in the rear.

 

[gmorrell]

Todd TCE:
Yea right.

So if the lower you go the better the car handles, then if it just rubs the road it's be 'bad fast' man!

Get a grip. Read a book. All this 'lower is so much better' is often more crap than fact.

What? You mean they should be concerned with trivial crap like camber gain curves, roll rates, roll centers, center of Gravity, roll couples, and that sort?

Read a book? Perhaps Milliken's "Race Car Vehicle Dynamics", or virtually anything written by Carroll Smith? ("Prepare to Win", "Drive to Win", "Tune to Win", etc.) Lord, that's several hundred pages there, that's way beyond the attention span of the average pabulum-sucking Internet geek.

You're preaching to the choir here Todd, but this is the Internet; many of these folks don't want to invest the time to actually learn something from a book. Rather, they want to be spoon-fed by self-anointed "experts" on bulletin boards and in chat rooms, many of whom can't write in complete sentences or use capitalization and punctuation so their diatribes are at least passably readable...

<small>[ September 27, 2003, 12:20 AM: Message edited by: Gary M. ]</small>

 

[billyshoe]

Originally posted by Gary M.:
[QB]

Originally posted by Todd TCE:
[qb] Yea right.

tire rub will limit the drop if the suspension is at all functional/effective/trackworthy.

 

[Shoaz]

Gary M.

What? You mean they should be concerned with trivial crap like camber gain curves, roll rates, roll centers, center of Gravity, roll couples, and that sort?

Read a book? Perhaps Milliken's "Race Car Vehicle Dynamics", or virtually anything written by Carroll Smith? ("Prepare to Win", "Drive to Win", "Tune to Win", etc.) Lord, that's several hundred pages there, that's way beyond the attention span of the average pablum-sucking Internet geek.

[/QB][/QUOTE]

In addition to Milliken & Milliken and Carroll Smith's books, which are very engineering oriented (especially M&M), "Performance Handling" by Don Alexander is pretty good, too, and a little more oriented toward the serious tweaker rather than an engineer. Some of the material in Smith's and Alexander's books are a bit dated, though.

 

[Magic Bus]

Great stuff! Tell it like it is. 'Half the fun is nailing a curve & knowing why. Grins. 'Glad to see others reading GRM, texts (another great text is "Going Faster" by some of the Skip Barber folks), & speaking up & debunking myths. Thanks to Todd, Gary, & others for contributing.

 

[speedy91]

Gary M.:
You're preaching to the choir here Todd, but this is the Internet; many of these folks don't want to invest the time to actually learn something from a book. Rather, they want to be spoon-fed by self-anointed "experts" on bulletin boards and in chat rooms, many of whom can't write in complete sentences or use capitalization and punctuation so their diatribes are at least passably readable...

That is such a true statement.