Articles » Basic Mods Part 2

Next is the suspension of your car. The options for this are just as broad as your options for an intake. You can just go with springs, adjustable springs or coilovers. Then there’re camber kits, upper and lower tie bars and anti-sway bars. This may sound like a lot but I’m going to go over each one for you.

First, let’s start off with your standard spring. There’s your basic lowering spring that all it is is a shorter spring than your stock one. And depending on how much shorter determines how much your car gets lowered. The other type of spring is a progressive rate spring. It’s just a spring that’s shorter than your stock one also, but it is basically made up of two different springs. What this means is that half of it compresses fairly easy, like a stock spring, and the other half is really stiff and doesn’t compress easily. This will give you a smooth ride driving around the city but also give you improved handling in hard turns because that is when the soft part of the spring compresses and the stiff part takes over and greatly slows down body roll (how far the body leans sideways in a hard turn).

Next we have the adjustable springs. Eibach Ground Controls are prefect examples of these. This is basically the same thing as the basic spring or progressive spring, but it has a threaded lock with two threaded nuts on it. What you do is raise the car, loosen the top nut and tighten or loosen the bottom one to lower or raise your car, then tighten the top one back down and you’re set. This guy in a prelude next to me at a car show did this to his car after he pulled up. He went from a 1-inch drop to a 2.5-inch drop in about 10 minutes. These are very useful if you’re not sure how much you want to lower your car and want to try a few things out and still have the option to change the ride height of your car.

Coilovers are a much more advanced form of the adjustable spring. They do include that but they also include a shock and strut. The shock is the gas/liquid filled cylinder that’s inside the spring and controls how smooth the ride is and how well the car takes those bumps. Coilovers can be matched to the type of racing you do, whether it’s auto crossing or drag racing, coilovers will help you get the best traction and handling possible. However, these wonderful improvements in your suspension come at a cost, at least 1200 for a set.

A final thing to keep in mind when lowering your car is that you may need a camber kit. If you only lower it an inch or inch and a half, it won’t really matter. Any more than that though will need a camber kit. As you may be wondering, camber is the angle at which the top of the wheel leans inward or outward from the car. Negative camber is when it leans in toward the car. A couple degrees of negative camber actually improves performance and handling, while much more than that will actually decrease the handling and tread of the tires fairly quickly. A camber kit is a simple solution that can fix an excessive negative or positive camber.