Do Lowering Springs "Done Right" Offer ANY Performace Advantage

[Joshbot007]

So the answer is always coilovers, I get that. I however do not want to give up on my EDC and would like the car to be just a bit stiffer with a tad less body roll while enjoying the aesthetics of a lowered car. I stumbled upon Malek's post from 2010 where he seems to have found a way to do lowering springs "right" with e36 bump stops and more that supposedly actually gained handling performance and feel.

The post can be found here https://www.m3post.com/forums/showth...ghlight=shaved

My question is that to anyone who has done this mod or something similar is, how did it age? Do you actually feel as if your car handles better, has better feel, less roll? Did it introduce any negative effects such as unexpected understeer, loss of control or loss of confidence when hitting bumps mid corner?

I would love to drop my car a tad while gaining some performance (even if marginal) but what I will absolutely not do is pay money to loose performance or cause bad characteristics with any mod I do.

Thanks!

[bbnks2]

These cars already have limited bump travel and get down on the bump stop pretty quickly in stock form. Lowering springs eat away at bump travel and have you riding on bump stops basically. On the street it feels great and more sporty. On the track you'll likely see more push/understeer. I tried the tall bump stop approach and couldn't get it to work well. Car transitioned amazingly well but the car couldn't handle any lateral g... it would just slide everywhere. This was in autocross anyway... raised the front spring rate (counter-intuitively) and cut the front bump stops shorter and the car performs 10x better with more bump travel. Once you hit that bump stop your effective spring rate raises significantly.

If you go through with lowering springs I guess shorter bump stops (or cutting them) is cheap but you'll have to do the measuring to ensure you maintain or increase bump travel up front.

[M43S7RO]

Sway bars if looking to control roll?

[atopa2002]

Lowering springs and shorter bump stops , sways ,camber plates here
I car handles well and I haven't reach the limits of the car on track just yet I think.

[atopa2002]

Originally Posted by bbnks2

These cars already have limited bump travel and get down on the bump stop pretty quickly in stock form. Lowering springs eat away at bump travel and have you riding on bump stops basically. On the street it feels great and more sporty. On the track you'll likely see more push/understeer. I tried the tall bump stop approach and couldn't get it to work well. Car transitioned amazingly well but the car couldn't handle any lateral g... it would just slide everywhere. This was in autocross anyway... raised the front spring rate (counter-intuitively) and cut the front bump stops shorter and the car performs 10x better with more bump travel. Once you hit that bump stop your effective spring rate raises significantly.

If you go through with lowering springs I guess shorter bump stops (or cutting them) is cheap but you'll have to do the measuring to ensure you maintain or increase bump travel up front.

Same here , Camber plates helped some in my case

[Joshbot007]

Originally Posted by bbnks2

These cars already have limited bump travel and get down on the bump stop pretty quickly in stock form. Lowering springs eat away at bump travel and have you riding on bump stops basically. On the street it feels great and more sporty. On the track you'll likely see more push/understeer. I tried the tall bump stop approach and couldn't get it to work well. Car transitioned amazingly well but the car couldn't handle any lateral g... it would just slide everywhere. This was in autocross anyway... raised the front spring rate (counter-intuitively) and cut the front bump stops shorter and the car performs 10x better with more bump travel. Once you hit that bump stop your effective spring rate raises significantly.

If you go through with lowering springs I guess shorter bump stops (or cutting them) is cheap but you'll have to do the measuring to ensure you maintain or increase bump travel up front.

Cool, so I guess you basically did the Malek mod but instead of the E36 bump stops you just trimmed yours.

What springs do you have?

Thanks!

[bbnks2]

Originally Posted by Joshbot007

Cool, so I guess you basically did the Malek mod but instead of the E36 bump stops you just trimmed yours.

What springs do you have?

Thanks!

No I have coilovers but that doesn't change the theory. tall bump stops with a short stroke strut just didn't pan out well. Stock struts have a bit more stroke than the typical aftermarket coilover so a taller bump stop might not be as severe. With a stock style bump stop (60mm) on my coilovers I was basically right on the bump stop at static ride height with a 336lb spring. Meaning, any bit of roll and the spring rate would be going up drastically. The car was extremely agile and turned in really well but just could not hold more than 1.0g lateral. Felt amazing... until it understeered at the limit. A 500lb spring gained me 1" of bump travel and I cut down the bump stop drastically. I now have about 3" of bump travel and 1.25" of droop travel. Allowing the car to roll at a linear rate of 500lb/in without bump stops coming into play is much more compliant and the front hooks up much better.

[Joshbot007]

Is there anything wrong with lowering springs paired with more power? I will be installing a supercharger soon and I am wondering if a firmer spring rate will cause unwanted wheel hop or something similar.

Thanks!

[drwankel]

Its good that you are thinking about the real world performance ramifications of doing a mod like this. Too often people are purely chasing a look without any thought as to what that look actually does to performance.

Practical example, in many cars, people complain about wheel gap being higher in the front than the rear, and try to even it out with lowering springs, only to find out that it handles worse.

There are legitimate reasons why the front would sit higher than the rear... it handles better. I don't know to what extreme this affects the e9x, but I've seen the same scenario on other platforms.

I'm the same as you- I'm not going to compromise performance to go after a certain look.