How common is this? All these different drops I hear about, I can only assume that the A-arms are now more like / than like -, has anyone that's been on them for a while noticed any significant problems? I don't care which, coilovers, lowered springs or (gasp) cut springs.

 

When I had my Accord, my drop on that car gave me suspension issues. I've yet to have any issues with the drop on the Max. I don't think you can drop a Honda without throwing something way out of specs where an alignment is not helpful. All I had to do with the Max was put on my lowering mods and get an alignment. No significant camber change or anything like that. So to answer your question, I don't think it's common at all.

 

It depends on how much you lower it. With most normal lowering springs you shouldn't have much of a problem. With coilovers that are pretty low you might have more issues. Significant power, wheel hop, abuse also leads to axle problems.

Higher quality axles will solve this though. www.raxles.com is a good place. We have pretty beafy axles.

 

i havnt had problems with my setup... knocking on wood.

 

What sort of 'problems' do you have in mind? In mild to moderate driving, or possibly even moderately hard driving, you might not even notice. You pretty much have to be cornering hard enough to start feeling slip angles build and/or either or both ends start to drift a little. What happens is that (1) the front roll center drops faster than the sprung mass does, (2) you move into an even less aggressive portion of your camber curve, and probably, (3) bumpsteer is affected.

The magnitude of these effects is most closely related to the length of the control arm and its relationship to track width. Relatively short control arms exaggerate the above effects, hence different cars respond differently to being lowered. What happens to the rear roll center also matters, as the inclination of the roll axis is affected. Steeper roll axes (with the rear RC higher) normally tend to develop a push as the roll angle develops. Same goes for the poorer camber gain (additional understeer).

The lowered CG does help, and turn-in may well be better. But the upper reaches of your cornering will suffer (slightly less ultimate lateral grip and a somewhat more variable understeer/oversteer balance).

PS - I suspect bumpsteer is the culprit with the Accord.

 

I was hoping to hear both from people like you Norm and street guys. Since I have a new job and once I have things a little better settled I plan on upgrading (finally). But I also need this car as a daily driver to work, so if I lower it and experiment with my auto-x/track setup and then screw things up more frequently while just driving around I want to at least have an idea that problems could be coming.

I have had my max on Pocono already and was fine trail-braking at 90mph, I know there's not many people who do that, but I am not going to limit myself. Road course hot laps are a load of fun.

 

Any chance you could take some measurements, enough to put together a 2-D model? If/when you do swap springs, some measurements to the heights of the centers of the control arm bushings afterward would provide another data point. I'm a bit curious as to how much difference there is among the various Maxima generations and also against my 626.

Norm

 

Norm, anything like this? I've gotta remeasure the upper spring & strut heights and arms because I'm getting a stock roll-center at ground level. I know the arms should be pointing down & out stock.



Oh, and on topic - when I was lowered 3"+ below stock and cornering hard I blew out both OEM CV's, put significant strain on the tie rods and their range of adjustment, and created some sheering forces on the 3 rear control arm bolts (wore down the threads while installed).

 

Pretty much.

FWIW, I'm working with a 2-D spreadsheet that also tracks motion ratio over suspension position (it's not quite constant).

Norm

 

The Accord has a double wishbone suspension in front, versus our MacPherson...big difference.

Bejay, what software is that? It looks very helpful. FYI if you save the screenshot as a GIF or PNG it will look much better than a JPG byte-for-byte.

 

I thought so. While SLA is technically superior in most respects, it can be more sensitive to ride height changes, depending on the locations of the rack and the tierod pivot *****.

Looks like one of the Performance Trends' programs.

Norm

 

Yep Norm it's their Circle Track Analyzer. After dropping thousands of bucks and hundreds (maybe thousands) of hours into setup, I decided to take a step back and think things through better from the beginning.

VQuick, I'll keep that in mind - just grabbed a shot one day and it's always changing.

 

Off-topic (with apologies), but what sort of software does one need to save a screen shot as a GIF or PNG?

Norm

 

Screen shot with the print screen button on your keyboard. You can save as a GIF or PNG using MS paint, although the quality may not be that good. Photoshop would be alright.

 

yep there's a button called "print screen." If you press it it will copy everything you see on the screen into the exchange buffer. To retrieve the picture, you have to open Paint (or any other image editing program of your choice) and press "paste" in the edit menu.

 

Yep, and Photoshop CS can be had for $0 in 20 minutes over broadband via uTorrent or other bit torrent/P2P software. I'm a highly ethical person but software/music piracy is my one vice. Once you copy the screenshot from the clipboard, just File > Save As and choose the file format there. Photoshop is teh s3x.

Anybody want to point me to a free copy of this Circle Track Analyzer?
J/k, sounds like they're a small specialty software company that doesn't make huge profits so I'd buy it if I had the money.

Back on topic, does anyone have any opinions as to just how low is a safe drop on a 4th/5th gen? In other words, is there a fairly discrete point where the geometry has changed enough to start wearing axles and such, or does it gradually get worse as you drop lower?

 

I have the tein ss coilovers on my 00 MAX for almost two years. I love the ride. The one problem I've been having is I've gone through 4 sets of axles in the last year and a half. I don't even keep my car that low because they seem to start clicking a lot sooner vs. keeping the car a little bit higher. I end up riding the axles until they are clicking even when I'm driving straight. I haven't been able to find any info or post on this. Has anyone else had this problem and what is the solution. PLEASE HELP ANYONE!!!!!

 

have you purchased Raxle axles, or another brand?

 

John....

A mild drop shouldn't cause any problems. My CVs both went bad, but at 120k miles (70k of that with some kind of drop) they were overdue anyhow. I now have Raxles on both sides. Just don't slam it low and you shouldn't have any problems.

Shouldn't you be working on the "new" car?

 

I'm lovin' your sig irish!!!

 

Who is the woman in your sig, Irish? If that's your significant other you're a lucky man.

 

Although I find my wife very attractive indeed, there's no way I would post her pic up on the org (nor would she allow it, I'm sure).

The girl is Cristina Scabia, lead singer of the Italian band Lacuna Coil (the band that Evanesence copied, basically)

more pics, good music, etc at www.emptyspiral.com

 

Eh, I was at ~155k, got used progress springs and my passenger cv was dead after awhile. I don't think they had been replaced yet, I got a raxle for the passenger side and haven't had any problems since (180k now).