Calming the Beast ... Making Suspension More Livable

I'm confused. You said your car is lowered 14/22 mm. You also said that your coilovers were at their "highest setting." Finally , you said you were going to raise you car. How?

Did you change the sway bar end links when you lowered your car? This can be a possible cause of binding in the suspension and weird handling or broken parts. A quick Google search found issues with the Stance kit and binding and broken sway bar brackets.

I wasn't being harsh, but I see too many threads where an obvious solution is suggested on the first page and the thread goes on forever because the OP (not this OP) ignores the advice and wants someone to validate his position.

@Curtis75: The car is fairly low mileage so I didn't bother to switch those out those out yet

@chiodos: It's not too painful when I hit bumps. Just my pride...

@Nohome: Noted, I'll be looking out for those symptoms

@maj75: The highest hieght setting in the rear will net you a lower stance. I actually got taller springs from Stance so I can raise it up. The endlinks have been swapped out. I talked to Stance about the bracket problem and I was assured the problem was corrected. Yeah I get where you're coming from. I'm been lurking here for a while now. I normally only post when I can't find anything via search or I'm really stomped.

As for next steps, I'm going to raise the car. I took a look at my control arms as advised and their not as parallel as they should be, hopefully that'll help. Also called my mech. to he suggested a set of Kumho LE Sports which should help both in the grip and comfort department, apparently they are a bargain here...

Let's see what happens

mad_machine wrote:

z31maniac wrote: "Stance" is the problem. For nearly every platform, you have to approach $1500+ per set for ride-height and damping adjustable decent coilover.

I would not go that far.. my old BMW 318ti has the Bilstein PSS9 coil overs on it.. I think I spent about $800 for the set

Notice I didn't say "every," I said "nearly every."

I'd also ask you what other suspensions with the same wheel/tire setup you drove on that car? I can tell you that while FMs VMaxx coilovers are INCREDIBLY competent for the money, they don't match something like the XIDA from 949 Racing.

(Yes, I've tracked both of them on the same car, wheel/tire setup. Nothing changed except the tires were older for the XIDAs and I still picked up 3 laps a sec.)

Raising the car might help any potential geometry related issues, like bump steer, if the car is prone to such things. Although at <1" lowered, you're not exactly in extreme territory where this should be a major issue. In of itself, this also does not necessarily improve the ride, if the spring and damping rates haven't physically changed. If your shocks are too short for the set ride height, such that you have significant spring preload, you may be reducing available droop travel. This is another potential cause for ride quality problems...And would only be made worse by using longer springs of the same rate with even more preload to raise the ride height further.

@Driven5, I'm hoping it'll help out with the geometry. The coilover heights are are controlled by the a separate mechanism than the perches that control pre-load. The preload won't be effected, unfortunately suspension travel won't be either :(

I spoke with Stance and the one of the things I can do to improve the ride is to lower the spring rates. Which could be an option in the future, for now I'm just going to hope the tires help out.

Thanks Guys!

I think I understand the "highest" comment then. In other words, you car is as low as the suspension will go. At that ride height you have minimal suspension travel. Unless you bought adjustable control arms for the rear, you will have a lot of camber, probable at the front too.

Relatively simple to raise it up to a close to stock setting and see if it makes a difference. I'd look for a good chassis shop to check on the alignment. If you have the print out for your current alignment, post up the settings.