Alright, first off I have an A33 Infiniti I30 (2000). The car has 40K miles on it, and I have already order the H&R springs. I plan on dropping the FRONT ONLY for now(using stock struts), and then in January, when I pay the car off, I will purchase Illuminas to install all the way round. For right now, I just wanna get rid of the horrible wheel gap in the front.

I know it may be slightly bumpy, but do you think this is safe? The roads around here are quite smooth, so I wont be beating it to death.

And how much should I trim the bumpstops?

 

I think they will blow in a few months but it's you're call. Id wait and do it all at once. It's not like you need the drop to drive the car.

 

I live in the city, and I had stock struts on HR springs and I was fine. It was too bumpy so I bought some GR2's, but you should be alright if your streets aren't that bad.

 

hr on stock for 7months now, no problems

 

stocks will wear fast with dropped springs probably wont ride real great either.

 

been on stocks for 1.5 years now, no problems yet

 

Just to be clear: Stock struts won't give you a bumpy ride in terms of how hard the bumps hit. What they will do is make the ride bouncier and less controlled, so all the little bumps and oscillations get to you and throw you around more. Some people don't mind that -- they don't care about being jiggled around as long as their tailbones don't get hurt. I think it's the most horrible thing ever...

Also, there is definitely a higher risk of premature wear or blowout with stock struts on lowering springs because the higher spring rate causes more stress on the dampers, and they weren't designed for that.

 

So, what's your sense of going from stock GLE to H&R springs and new struts - what will this really mean in terms of ride and handling?

 

When you say "new struts", do you mean new OEM struts? If that's the case, I would strongly recommend against pairing them with any lowering springs. Don't forget, the dampers on the GLE were the softest available.

The best way I could describe the H&R/OEM GLE combo is stiffness without control. If you've ever ridden in a good car that comes from the factory with a firm suspension, like a BMW M3 or a Subaru WRX STI, you know that even though the bumps hit fairly hard sometimes, the car is totally composed and settles down very quickly after every hit or undulation. Well, this won't be like that: if you stiffen your springs but not your dampers, you'll get the hard hits but the car will be easily unsettled and the wheels won't be able to track the pavement properly. So, you might see an improvement in handling on smooth, flat roads, but that's all: once you start hitting bumps and undulations in the road, your car start getting wobbly and bouncy and your handling will suffer because your car will tend to skitter off. In other words, you'll have poor ride quality AND poor handling.

 

...And if you just put them on the front people might think you have hydraulics.

 

Exactly.





10bits