I am considering lowering my car this year. I would like to wait until KYB make AGX's for 2k officialy. Here's my dilemma: I like the height of my rear end now, I don't like the front. I plan on getting 235/50/17 Pilot A/S in the spring so that should fill some of the gap nicely. Has anyone just dropped the front with some HR's but left the back springs OEM? I think this would give it a nice even look visually, but in reality I know it would be off. I do have a RSB so my concern is that the car will be extremley oversteer-biased at the limit with the softer springs and RSB.

Comments?

 

i wondered about this too...i asked a mechanic about this and he suggested that i not, but when i asked him why, he just said it was "unsafe, that's all".

anyone have a more detailed explanation?

 

I have my 2K2 lowered in the front only on H&R and the rears on stock. I am also running KYB AGX. I can take pics over the weekend and post them up for you. MOst people who see the car think it is lowered all around. I have spoke to mechanics and there is no reason why it is unsafe, if you search around you will see there are plenty of people here who have mixed springs.

 

pics would be much appreciated! Thanx

 

Check out the new pics (pg 2) on my homepage you can see my car with just the front lowered on H&R.


Link to pics

 

I think this way you'll get more understeer under heavy cornering because you're making the front end tighter than the rear. But in your case, the RSB will make up for the extra understeer and will bring your handling back to stock like(understeer).

Hope this makes sense.

Peace.

 

Hmmm.... I would think that it would do the opposite. If you tighten up the front it would make the rear softer, so it would oversteer easier. Maybe some of the AutoX guys can step up and provide some advice on this one. Chebosto...

 

thanx for the pics man. your car looks sweet btw.

 

The assumption so far is that the new front springs are stiffer than OE, and I don't have any Maxima spring info, so if anybody could post the rates of the springs in question . . .

Anyway, there's at least two effects going on.

First, there's oversteer/understeer as a function of suspension roll stiffness only means that more of the lateral weight transfer is going to happen up front. The rear merely handles less of the total lateral weight transfer; it does not get softer. The greater LWT at the front means that the total lateral grip at the front drops faster than the total lateral grip at the rear, meaning more understeer/less oversteer. This is because the lateral grip of a tire does not increase linearly with vertical tire loading.

The other effect is due to the effect on front wheel camber, and this gets kind of involved. The stiffer springs increase the total roll stiffness, so if all else remained equal the car would roll less and the adverse effect of +camber as a function of roll angle would be reduced (read: better front grip, less understeer/more oversteer). But, all else does not remain equal, since the front roll center drops by about double the amount of the drop, meaning that at any given lateral acceleration you will have more roll (offsetting the effect of the stiffer springs to some extent).

Gut feel is that you'd end up being able to achieve a slightly higher maximum lateral acceleration at the expense of a bit more understeer (less oversteer). Not an entirely bad place to end up, actually. You'll probably want to tinker with your tire presures a bit for a little fine tuning.

Norm