Are lowered cars to be avoided?

If you want to see modded cars, then go to Halfords parking area in Uxbridge. I often speculate why this is the case. Halfords sell general after market items, e.g. spark plugs, oils, car batteries etc, which all cars need, so why this obvious bias of their visitors? My 2p worth.

Sorry for not being more helpful but the Govt website is a chuffing nightmare to look through. Everything is in PDF format and after a while it makes my eyes hurt. Got an old manual kicking about somewhere but its woefully out of date so I wouldn't trust anything said in it.

The best people to tell you would be the ministry test centres that also carry out specialist vehicle examinations on kit cars and the like.

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What's stupid/ dangerous about it?

Jim

If you're going to lower something, you should also stiffen it, else there's a higher chance of it bottoming out, especially when laden.

And if you've cut springs, you may damage them, causing catastrophic failure.

The numptys that come into garages with lowered cars moaning about the shuddering when they accelarate, caused by the lowering and the driveshafts running at the wrong angle.:O) Also complaining that the exhaust is blowing, so u look underneath and the exhaust is smashed to bits from grounding out.:O) I laugh at the ammount of alloys with rubberband tyres that are buckled to hell prolly from going up and down kerbs :O) Kevs/barrys only put intake kits on for the noise prolly not realising that there is a loss of power coz the noise fools em into thinking its faster.:O)

All funny :OD

By definition, when you cut the springs, you stiffen them. Basic physics.

A point with some degree of merit, but how difficult is it to lop a coil or two off the springs without damaging them? It's not rocket science!

Laters, Jim.

Also sprach Jim Walsh :-

Though many coil spring designs have a closed coil each end and are groud flat. Grinding it flat may be easy enough, but closing a previously open coil isn't going to be as easy.

Jim Walsh ( snipped-for-privacy@sheffield.ac.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Erm, no. (In a "yes - slightly" but fundamentally no kind of way)...

If you have a ten-coil spring that had a rate of 200lb/in and a certain free length, cutting two coils out of it may change the spring rate slightly, but it won't *change* it in the same way that putting springs with a higher rate and a lower free length will. Which is how to do it properly.

This all reminds me of a Paxo 1.1 that was in at a mate's Cit Specialist garage, pissing coolant all over the place.

Because one of the front 245 18" tyres had rubbed through the lower rad hose.

One of the others had just about got through the petrol filler pipe and all four had had a good crack at the inner arches (lots of shiny metal the other side of holes in the liners).

It looked like a tin opener had been used on the wings to fit the VTR-style bodykit, and the mesh grille was held in with blutack. Sort of...

It left with a VERY large bill, after an argument with the 17yo git, which ended with his parents being told it was not leaving the yard under it's own power in the state it was in.

They were given a choice - Have it inspected by the police or pay for four new standard-fit 13" rims and 145 tyres and get it out of there asap.

It looked very silly when it left...

Also sprach Adrian :-

Yes it will - it'll change it by 20%.

Think of it like this. A single coil spring may have a rate x. Put two such springs together and it'll still take the same effort to compress each spring by an inch, but you only need to compress each spring by half an inch to shorten the composite by an inch. Thus, the spring rate is half what it was before.

Another way of looking at is that you're lopping off a coil or two which substantially reduces the quantity of sprung metal in the spring. The exact same forces are being loaded in each end but into xx.xx% less material which is putting much higher stresses and strains through what's left. Not to mention the design/stability issues.

If it's the same forces then it'll be the same stresses & strains . HTH

through less material - per unit length the stresses & strains are increased.

I love the phrase "its not rocket science" it usually in my experience is used by foremen and managers who could not find there own arses using both hands.>

LOL, funny isn't it. These stupid companies investing hundreds of man hours in improving spring design, idiots the lot of them. That's why modern cars are so much worse at cornering.

That's mainly tyres though, springs are normally just slightly lighter nowadays.

Yes, but if it's shorter it'll be the same material per unit length. You'll get more strain for the same deflection or the same energy input.

So if it's the same stress per unit length, it's just as stiff...

If you hit a certain bump, the spring will still compress by the same rate...

You'd think so, but physically cutting and re-fitting the spring is easy to get wrong, judging by the number of broken pre-cut springs... :-/

Also sprach "JohnR" :-

I wasn't suggesting it was a good thing - just that shortening a spring makes it stiffer.