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sometimestwice

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I know that my Civic is no supercar. It's an enjoyable drive and appealing looking car as is. I personally think a small drop would look better. If it changes literally nothing but look lower I'd be okay with that. If I want a performance upgrade, I'd buy engine upgrades. I just like to have my car stick out and look different, hence why it's called customization. It's what the owner likes. If I saw a line of 100 10th Civics, I would be most interested in the one that looks different. If you want to stay 100% stock, go for it. People who modify cars like automobile expression, and expression sets us all apart and makes life more interesting.
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I know that my Civic is no supercar. It's an enjoyable drive and appealing looking car as is. I personally think a small drop would look better. If it changes literally nothing but look lower I'd be okay with that. If I want a performance upgrade, I'd buy engine upgrades. I just like to have my car stick out and look different, hence why it's called customization. It's what the owner likes. If I saw a line of 100 10th Civics, I would be most interested in the one that looks different. If you want to stay 100% stock, go for it. People who modify cars like automobile expression, and expression sets us all apart and makes life more interesting.
100% agree, I don't think I ever own a standard car.
Mind you the newer car looks a bit better standard already, some of the older car you can measure wheel gap with hand. :D

I am just saying that lowering springs don't have much performance gain if you look at it from a vehicle dynamic perspective.
But all other function that you mention, the lowering springs will do just fine. :)

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sometimestwice

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100% agree, I don't think I ever own a standard car.
Mind you the newer car looks a bit better standard already, some of the older car you can measure wheel gap with hand. :D

I am just saying that lowering springs don't have much performance gain if you look at it from a vehicle dynamic perspective.
But all other function that you mention, the lowering springs will do just fine. :)

Jerrick
I'm just amazed how far the Civic has come. The lower/wider stance is great. I'm excited to see the aftermarket parts once the companies out there get the ball rolling. Yea I never have cars in stock form lol. You don't severely notice performance upgrades until you start using tuners like flashpro and/or turbos, from my personal experience. But I sure like to walk out to my car and see it low to the ground, and looks completely different from any other car
 

totopo

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What your saying makes a lot of sense. However, it proves my point that lowering springs are better for a daily driver where you just want to 'set it and forget it'. If you are racing or need adjustability, you should be upgrading the dampers as well, or just going to a coilover setup.

In my case, I want to throw it in and forget about it. I like the softer OEM ride, but I want less body roll and a lower stance.
Spring stiffness is determined by unsprung weight, sprung weight, and bump travel (~ride height). If you lower the car without increasing the spring rate, you will bottom out and kill your suspension. If you increase your spring rates like you should (1" drop actually requires a huge increase in spring rates. Dun wanna look up the math, but probably around the order of 50+% you can do it yourself here: http://www.racingaspirations.com/apps/wheel-frequency-calculator) then you will get a much worse than OEM ride by having stiffer springs that are now woefully underdamped. If you want lower stance you HAVE to have stiffer ride, or you will bottom out your suspension all day long and ruin your suspension components and frame.

lowering springs will have all sorts of compromise. They try to lower the car with sacrificing other things too much. They try not to bottom out too much, try not to be over-stiff so as to not be super under-damped. It is basically only good for lowering your car when you don't have enough money to do it better. But it saves money in the short run by doing damage to your shocks and frame.

Body roll is important mostly for feel and autocross. It doesn't have much an effect on circuit style tracks as one might think. Roll control is an aftereffect of selecting appropriate springs for your ride height. After that you use anti-roll bars for roll control. A lesser known effect of lowering the static ride height is it changes your roll center, moving it away from the center of gravity. Doing so, if you lower your car, you actually end up with more roll, given same everything else. Given stiffer springs maybe it will counteract somewhat.

If you are racing you know enough about shocks and suspension that you wouldn't be driving a civic sedan with a cvt.

PS: about the worst thing you can do is to get more unsprung weight. If you throw on aftermarket springs with stock shocks that are usually undersprung and underdamped and then throw on monstrous 19" wheels it amplifies all the problems.

Lower center of gravity, stiffer spring rate, quicker/more responsive around corners isn't a performance upgrade? Indy cars, Nascar, true supercars, they all sit low to the ground. I'm not saying springs give +10 horsepower, but it's a definite upgrade from the very tame stock suspension. But 99.9% of the time people use springs for style, just like bigger rims. I guess I should have redworded "compressed spring", it wasn't literal. I meant the spring height. I'm definitely no licensed mechanic but I don't want people to shy away against suspension work just because they get scared about damaging their car. A proper setup is safe to use. I have a friend who has had lowering springs on his car for 5+ years with no issues
So the biggest benefits of lowering the car is lower center of gravity and aero. These days in modern racing, aero is king and mechanical grip is secondary, so it's all about minimum ride height legally allowable by regulations. This though, requires tons of wind tunnel testing and huge aero, giant wings, giant diffusers. Aero is not intuitive to the unexperienced and it's not just a matter of ride height. Without the proper shape you won't get benefit of ground effect. So you can basically rule out the aero benefit from street cars. That's why you can't look to see what modern race cars are doing and try to replicate it on your daily driver.

So it's down to center of gravity. Lower center of gravity is good, but you have to sacrifice. For lower center of gravity, you have to have stiffer springs (bad), and you have less movement to work with for your suspension geometry. Ugh, suspension is so complicated i don't want to type out more.

basically, dampers, geometry, sprung weight, unsprung weight, spring rate all have to be in harmony. If you go around blasting one metric, the static ride height with a crappy spring rate, then everything else is going to suffer. You get minimally lowered center of gravity but now on super under-damped springs at the wrong suspension geometry. I can almost guarantee the car will be slower on a track.

One thing also that doesn't get much consideration is that for a daily driver, the civic can have a MASSIVE range of sprung weight. from one solo driver to 4 passengers with luggage. It can be as much as 3000 lbs compared to 4000 lbs. Some of the ability to lower the car is that the OEM setup is designed with extra bump travel for when you are carrying cargo. If you lower your car, you should avoid having too much cargo (including passengers). So why bother lowering a 4 door car if it hurts the car to use the 2 extra doors? just get a coupe...

If you want to lower the car properly it comes at bigger costs. digressive coilovers with MASSIVE spring rates, beefy bump stops, and roll angle adjusters. And you will for sure have a rougher ride.
 

sometimestwice

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I understand and agree with your post Totopo. But I've personally known people that have put upwards of 100,000 miles on lowering springs yet their car is still intact. Look at a lot of stock corvettes, GTRs, 350Zs. They are low for stock. I'm sure their suspension is solid but just because you drop a car an inch doesn't mean your going to break your car in half. This isn't true. Now if you load your car with 4 300 pound adults and a trunk full of concrete blocks, and do 50 mph over old train tracks, well Yea that's dumb. You pay to play. I just don't want younger, newer people to the modified life to shy away from suspension modification because of false information. I've done the coilover life too, I had really expensive coilovers, yet all I had was noise issues and a shock blew out. You want to lower your car, springs/shocks are the way to go. That's just my two cents.
 


totopo

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I understand and agree with your post Totopo. But I've personally known people that have put upwards of 100,000 miles on lowering springs yet their car is still intact. Look at a lot of stock corvettes, GTRs, 350Zs. They are low for stock. I'm sure their suspension is solid but just because you drop a car an inch doesn't mean your going to break your car in half. This isn't true. Now if you load your car with 4 300 pound adults and a trunk full of concrete blocks, and do 50 mph over old train tracks, well Yea that's dumb. You pay to play. I just don't want younger, newer people to the modified life to shy away from suspension modification because of false information. I've done the coilover life too, I had really expensive coilovers, yet all I had was noise issues and a shock blew out. You want to lower your car, springs/shocks are the way to go. That's just my two cents.
I'm not saying that your car will blow up with lowering springs, but that it is HIGHLY unlikely you will improve the vehicle dynamics with lowering springs and you do risk doing damage (bending, stressing) your frame as well as having more wear on your shocks and bushings.

The examples you picked have ground clearance in the 4-5 inch range (c7=4, gtr=4.3, 350z=4.7). The thing is, their suspension is designed to work at that ride height (actually, the corvette may come out of the factory designed for a lower ride height...). If your static suspension is supposed to work at 5", the geometry is worse at a static ride height of 4" ground clearance. This is especially true of macphearson struts, which the civic has. The camber curve goes backwards at a certain point.

If your goal is "low and slow" then lowering springs might be for you. I just don't want people thinking they are getting performance upgrades by using lowering springs.
 

sometimestwice

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I'm not saying that your car will blow up with lowering springs, but that it is HIGHLY unlikely you will improve the vehicle dynamics with lowering springs and you do risk doing damage (bending, stressing) your frame as well as having more wear on your shocks and bushings.

The examples you picked have ground clearance in the 4-5 inch range (c7=4, gtr=4.3, 350z=4.7). The thing is, their suspension is designed to work at that ride height (actually, the corvette may come out of the factory designed for a lower ride height...). If your static suspension is supposed to work at 5", the geometry is worse at a static ride height of 4" ground clearance. This is especially true of macphearson struts, which the civic has. The camber curve goes backwards at a certain point.

If your goal is "low and slow" then lowering springs might be for you. I just don't want people thinking they are getting performance upgrades by using lowering springs.
You risk wear and tear on everything on your car any time you drive it, same concept. Like I stated earlier, I'd lower my car even if there was no benefit other than a lowered stance. I guarantee if you drive like an idiot, no matter stock or not you can blow shocks and springs, bushings, frame. But generally when you lower it your mind is set on taking it easier on the car. It's not the car, it's the driver awareness, and choosing proper parts.
 

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You risk wear and tear on everything on your car any time you drive it, same concept. Like I stated earlier, I'd lower my car even if there was no benefit other than a lowered stance. I guarantee if you drive like an idiot, no matter stock or not you can blow shocks and springs, bushings, frame. But generally when you lower it your mind is set on taking it easier on the car. It's not the car, it's the driver awareness, and choosing proper parts.
Tell that to all the highschool/college kids with eBay no-name coilovers and/or lowering springs. Talk about wear and tear...

If you want better handling from a simple spring change you want more rate. Lowering it could improve your CG/roll center but it's not going to be a mind-blowing difference. It also will stress all suspension components more under all driving conditions regardless of how you drive. Depending on the suspension design the worst conditions aren't always big clunks/ hard turns...it can easily be the small bumps from uneven paved surfaces, especially when the car is riding at a height it wasn't designed to.
 

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On some platforms, users can get away with a mild lowering spring and smaller reinforced bumpstops, as is the case with some HFP systems. I'm in a "wait and see" mode until I see further testing on the OEM dampers. But I don't expect mainstream Civic dampers to be overbuilt for a wide range of tolerances.
 

sometimestwice

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Honda really steered away from performance products. Which is fine, no sense in buying HFP suspension for $750 when springs that cost $200 outdo them. To each their own.
 


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Hm I just want moderate 1" drop. Guess I gotta wait for Eibach.
 

sometimestwice

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The 9th Gen stuff doesn't fit the Civicx, it's been tested. I read the Civicx suspension setup resembles the 7th Gen civics. 8th and 9th were basically identical though except for the rear top hat rubber on the spring (I had 8th civic springs on my 9th). Considering how mild H&R drop rates have been in the past and how low the Civicx is from factory I'd be shocked if H&R goes any lower than 1.2" on the new gen Civics. I've had tons of springs. Best ones I've ever had was Eibach Prokit. I haven't ever ridden on H&R but I haven't heard anything bad so to each their own
 
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