Yeah, I am not too worried about the scraping. Mine usually happens on the "rebound" of the front end so if I go slow it won't scrape.

 

Nope. Just seriously considering them.

 

7 days later........

 

Oh wow, i totally forgot, sorry about that....

But i am 4.25" from the ground on those corner points..

 

Well, not in a straight line with no bumps in the road, but as Matt mentioned, bumpsteer will happen and that's going to hurt the ride and feel.

I don't think this is true at all. Once you lower a car enough you mess up the roll center and all the stuff Matt mentioned, so even though you have a lower center of gravity and less body roll due to stiff springs, your handling is actually significantly worse than stock. But we're not hating on you slammed guys, I have a lot of respect for you guys in particular and wish my car looked as hot as yours...mine looks by a 4x4 in comparison.

Matt, I read this huge informative thread a while ago (the best suspension/lowering info thread I've ever seen) and they mentioned that it's not actually the angle the LCAs make with the ground that ultimately determines camber change, but the angle between the LCA and the strut. For the most part the angle with the ground is a good indicator but the point where it switches to positive camber is going to depend on the particular suspension.

http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=1363022
"Even though the LCA may be angled upwards relative to the ground level (it was slightly that way on my stock Mk4), the angle between the LCA and the strut is less than 90. As that angle approaches 90, it pushes the bottom of the strut outwards, increasing negative camber. It is only when the angle has exceeded 90 degrees that the bottom of the strut is pulled back inwards, making the camber more positive."

So yeah, this is off-topic from Poowill's point, but hey, it's the advanced suspension forum.

 

Also, Poowill, if you installed these yourself did you have access to a 4-post lift or how did you do it? I'm trying to do it with some combination of ramps. Would loading the front suspension (jack stands under the LCAs) be close enough to loading the front tires? I really want my doors to close properly....

 

Correction: It may be worse than stock. There are so many variables at play that it's impossible to make a definitive statement for all big drops.

 

If the LCA and strut form a right angle, then you'll still gain positive camber on compression, and if they're at maybe 80 or 85 degrees, you'll gain a tiny bit of negative camber and then gain positive camber.. when they're parallel to the ground is when you start to get a decent camber curve. But there's a lot more bad handling than camber. Personally I've noticed the ackerman effect as whenever I take a low or medium-radius turn at full tilt the inside tire will start to scream. Very annoying to say the least...

 

I had access to a 4 post lift at my school shop. I don't see any other good way of doing it, just because there is a lot of adjusting and moving of the sfc's. The lift i used had air jacks, so i was able to use those to put good amount of pressure on the sfc's to fit snug up against the car.

Thanks for the information and web page, that's a great post.

 

In my opinion I wouldn’t use hose clamps for one reason you could destroy the rubber bushing that holds the exhaust in place. That’s if you care.

 

Well i raised the car up about 1" today. No more slammed , but its alot more practical. I will be taking the car out of town more so this will make me worry a little less.

Again, since i have a 95 for daily driving, i get in the 97 and just love what the SFC's do to the ride. And that's with Ksports and 18's! What an awesome mod.

Now, to switch the cross bars so i'm not hitting the exhaust every time i accelerate

 

Nice. Your handling will improve significantly too. By the way, I just installed mine last night. We did it with the car on 4 ramps and I'm very happy with the result. I'll make a new post soon.

 

I dunno chris...I haven't had any problem, and all of my hangars are clamped. The key is to put the clamp around the curved diameter of the hangar, not crosswise...that way there is really no stress on the rubber at all.

 

If I were you I'd put some SFCs on the 95 as well...

Can't stand how my car rides sometimes, and that's with some pretty soft springs and dampers.

 

I will tell you that- Ksports and D2s are junk. I have riden on those "coilovers" and they ride like ****. They are do not have enough rebound capability.

I am currently getting some custom balljoint and tie rod relocation adapters for my car.

The pic in my sig line is old, my car isn't slammed to the ground. I do scrape on small inclined with my SFCs but I can't complain about any bump steer or anything.

Corner weight and aligned, car is a blast to drive. I've never driven a Ksport or D2 car that rides and handles better.

This is a 50MPH turn.... show me body roll.

 

^^^^ Need a better turning picture cause that doesn't show a thing.

 

I think I am going to raise the miata up a tad and install the butterfly brace. Good Advice from Matt as usual...

 

Thats as good as it gets.... and i don't feel like putting a video up online. Pic was taken from faaaaaaaaar away from that corner. Basically up to 110 down the straight down to 80 through the 1st corner and then drop down to 2nd and power out of corner around 50-60MPH shifting as soon as I was out.

I don't mess around with suspension work.



Pic of the suspension "unloaded" booking it down the straight at about 105-110MPH.

 

what you are talking about is prolly a much lower drop. i drove my car for 2 years on stock 4x4 and i have had it for 2 years on ksports. on stock suspension, i was always all over the road, i could hardly stay in one line on the highway. taking a turn felt like my car was about to tip over going into the corner. the difference between now and then is like apple and oranges !

 

Dude, you have about as low a drop as any Maxima I've ever seen. A "much lower" drop would be where the chassis is resting on the pavement. With your drop you are definitely getting many benefits but also some drawbacks due to the geometry changes. I'll quote the E30 M3 Performance page since it's clear and concise:

When cornering, the centripetal force which acts through the CG will act to rotate the vehicle about the roll center. The distance between the roll center and the CG determines the lever arm with which the centripetal force cause the car to roll. This is called the "roll couple". The longer this lever arm is, the more the car will roll for a given G-loading.

The key point is that as a MacPherson strut suspension is lowered, the length of this lever arm increases. Just compare A1 to A2 in the figure above. Thus even though the car is lower, it will tend to roll more! This is not what many people expect when they lower their cars.

There are benefits to lowering your car - reduced weight transfer and less "jacking". And there are also disadvantages - increased roll couple, a negative effect on camber curves and possibly increased bump-steer. Thus, lowering your car involves a trade off. Lower is often better, but too low is not good. If you stiffen the front springs at the same time that you lower your car (this is usually the case) then the stiffer springs offer an increased roll rate to counter-act the increased roll couple. In this case you get reduced weight transfer without necesarilly increasing roll. And often the reduction in weight transfer will offset the reduced camber curve and bump steer effects enough that the car will ulitmately be faster around a track. However, you should not lower your car without at least being aware of the possible negative consequences.

 

Sorry if I came off the wrong way.. I'm simply trying to edumacate the people that need it.
I see a post about someone installing SFCs and then complaining about scraping... then I look at the picture and see the car is completely slammed. Well there's a reason its scraping! It's too damn low! That slammed ride height is also ruining the ride quality and handling of the car. So if the car is a show car and you just want the low ride, why are you/they/whoever spending all this money on super high performance tires, coilovers, SFCs, and sway bars. If you want to slam the car, buy a set of ground controls and 20s, wrap them with some Wanli trash rubber, and call it a day.

So, based on the assumption (damn, did I make an assumption? shame on me!) that said posters actually CARE about their handling and ride, I'm trying to help you guys improve said handling and ride.

Also, just because you don't track the car doesn't mean you don't have problems. how often do you eat through front tires? there's probably a damn good reason if you're that low. every time you turn a corner, you're scrubbing the inside tire. this will literally halve the life of your tires. raise the car an inch and see what happens (put it this way, I had my 3rd gen that low and was going through street tires every 8,000 miles. the alignment rack said it was perfect. I raised the car so it's only about 1.5' lower than stock, relocated my tie rod ends and ball joints, and now my tire life for the same size/brand has gone to over 30,000 miles/set.)

I didn't change my driving habits one bit, just fixed the inherent alignment problems. Also note none of that is track time. I have another dedicated set of wheels & tires for track days.