i cut my old springs down.....maybe a lil bit too far my top of the fenderwell to ground measurement is 25 and a half inches in the front i was wondering what some of the measurements were from people who have one inch lowering springs cause i need to do something i cant drive the car with out scrapeing so i was thinkin about puting inch lowering springs on but i want to make sure they will help before i put them on

 

word of advice never cut factory spring it destroys ride qulity and cause the car to bounce with even the slightest bump. 1 inch lowering springs should help plus the usually get a better handling car because a lower center of gravity I would definetly put the inch lowering spring

 

Where do you people come from? Every once in a while someone turns up that claims that you’ll cause the end of the world if you cut a spring…

Cutting springs does nothing of the sort. Cutting a spring increases spring rate and lowers ride height… sure you can cut them and end up with too high a spring rate and too low a ride height, but it doesn’t change the basic properties of the spring. It’s just a simple piece of metal coiled into a coil. If you cut the spring you have made that same piece of metal shorter so it takes more force to bend it.

On a 3rd gen with some of the better springs (like a TA or Z28), you can end up with a pretty nice combination that sits a little lower then a set of eibach pros by cutting the fronts 1 coil and the rears about ½ a coil, then swapping spring isolators front to back (front one is very thin, the back one is very thick, if you don’t swap you end up with a car that sits way low in the front… if you cut less in the front and more in the back the front springs will be too soft and the rear will be too stiff). I’d bet that about 3/2-3/4 of a coil in the front and about 1/3 of a coil in the back would get you pretty close to 1” drop…

 

Its about time I let you have it Crossfire. Your holly spring *** attitude is out of line.

You should not reduce a cars hieight by using a coil with fews active coils than it is designed or you will suffer from frequency problems

WHY? BECAUSE when you cut off coils on a conventional type front spring what happens is when you hit harder bumps the spring will progress into a higher rate faster when that first 1inch of travel is gone thus the "dong, dong affect" and the car will often dribble the wheels like a basketball.

A proper spring that will incounter adequate suspenson travel for street use needs to have more active coils and a thicker wire rather than fewer and a thinner wire. The rate of each may be close to the same on the first inch of compression but the second inch in massive travel will play havoc with the spring with fewer coils.

This is why it is best to buy a lowered spring designed for the car. Its ok in most cases to cut about a 1/2 coil off a spring design for a specific application, but generally no more than that.

Hence why I told CrazyHawaiin a few months back that I would what out using those short springs he bought and you had to argue with me about frequency and I'm an idiot. You want to be helpful around here, then learn and explain thing to people like I trie to do rather than being cynical. Part of that post we were saying the same things and you were too stubborn to read it biasly to figure that out, the other parts you were just ignorant like you will most likely be responding to this message.

 

Dean, you seem to have some incontrollable desire to not only prove that you’re an idiot but totally incapable of learning anything.

As I clearly explained the last time you started running your mouth about this, frequency has NOTHING to do with the number of free coils a spring has beyond the fact that a sorter (lesser free coils) spring will tend to be stiffer and will have a higher frequency.

If the springs have the SAME spring rate they will have the SAME frequency in the same application, it doesn’t matter if there are only 2 free coils or 100.

1- I posted details about this earlier, including the formula to calculate frequency showing that it has absolutely nothing to do with free coils.
2- No matter how much you’d like to you can’t change they physics of how things work
3- I am being critical because there appear to be some people out there that never paid attention in high school physics and then make statements as fact that are not, and if I see it I want to make 100% sure that someone that comes along and reads this has absolutely no misconceptions of what the truth is.

Now go get yourself banned again…

 

BTW, if you’ve got an oscillation problem with the suspension most likely you don’t have enough shock dampening for the spring rate that you’re running.

 

What you have said for the most part is true- I am not disputing that, nor did I the last time.

*But you are not getting it as to what I am saying*
Read the following slowly and carefully

You take two identical rate springs at 1 inch compression

Both spring designs are the same ride height when compressed one inch as per normal install practice on spring design (this is not sometimes the case with cushy ride springs, but standard for racing spring designs so lets use this rule of thumb- because we are looking at altering a stock height spring for more performance on lowering the car without grounding out.

*These are close examples, but not real life calculations on spring designs for our cars*
Spring #1 has a ride height of 13" tall using say a 1/2" wire and 9 coil winds (thus 7 free or active coils) It has a rate of 600lbs at 1 inch compression.
Spring #2 has a ride height of 13" tall also but uses a 3/4" wire and 11 coil winds (thus 9 free or active coils) It also has the same rate of 600lbs at 1 inch compression

So far- they are the same

Here's where they differ and the problem arises-

You drive on the street and occationally impact a bump or dip that will cause quite a bit more suspension travel than normal ( I would dare to say in the real world that most of your cars will compress the spring about 2" more at times with total ride travel of about 4 1/4" on a stock car. Now a cut lowered car may only go 3 1/2" due to the spring being cut, bump stop contact, AND the rate increase I am about to explain (Note: that 3 1/2" max travel starts from an already lowered point of 1 1/2" of ride heght)

Now on a cut stock spring, You will get more of the design of Spring #1 example
When you buy an aftermarket performance spring, you will get more of a design of #2 However, you would get one with an higher rate with a slightly thicker wire than that example and increase the rate to about 700 to prevent ground out (I need the spring examples of #1 and #2 to be the same rate @ 1"for this explination so you will understand how different designs work.

NOW-
When both spring #1 and spring #2 designs are compressed further than the 1" all the way to 2" compression- WHAT HAPPENS?

The very first thing is the top and bottom "active coils" will both equally start to become inactive and ground against the already inactive coils (Read this again- its the most important part to learn and understand)
So what this does is cause a progressive loss of active coils and will increase the rate dramatically (Increases frequency )
on the coil design with fewer active coils to start with in compare to the design with the great # of free coil to start with. Yes it will also affect the spring #2 but at a much slower progressive rate than spring #1

SOOO....the results:

Sping #1 @ 1"/600lbs.... @ 2"/ 750lbs
Spring #2 @ 1"/600lbs....@ 2"/640lbs

The fewer the coils the harder it is to control the spring. You have to run your shock rates so high to compensate for the over travel rates that the normal ride suffers... or visa versa

Hence why I told CH not to use those springs on the street without some very high dollar shocks with variable vavling (aka 4 ways)

Now you get it Idiot?

 

So who's the idiot. Explain yourself out of this one Kind Sir.
Maybe the book you read and quote to be a suspension expert doesn't have that info.

 

Dude, that it’s either really late and/or that was the most confusing post you’ve ever written.

If I’m following:
Cut spring vs aftermarket spring, probably won’t have the same rate to prevent bottoming (probably putting words in your mouth there), even if they have the same rate, spring rate will increase faster on the cut spring due to coil stack… right?

If so, no on both counts.

1- I’ve cut the original front springs on my ’83 TA to give me slightly lower then eibach pro ride height with a spring rate of 890lbs (calculated and then tested using a hydraulic press and a corner weight scale)… that’s greater then the eibach pro specific rate spring rate.
2- Coils don’t stack one at a time unless you’re running a progressive rate spring. For that matter Coils on f-body springs don’t stack at all. First, you don’t get that much travel at the spring, you’re at about 1/3 the way down the control arm from the pivot, even the bump stop that is mounted outboard of the spring typically has somewhere in the ¾” range clearance before it makes contact with the K-member pad. The spring compresses less then that. EVEN IF you had some chance of being right and one coil compressed at a time, cut stock springs or aftermarket springs have more space between each coil then the total the spring is going to compress total, so you couldn’t stack one coil no matter what you tried. For that matter, IF what you were saying was possible, the spring with more free coils would stack sooner because more of the coil is the actual steel spring rather then the air space between them.

If you really wanted to reproduce the stock springs “free coil” properties, with the bent in pigtail like the stocker, just follow Herb Adams' recommendations. He has actually written that aftermarket springs are a waste of money in most street/performance applications unless your stockers are damaged and recommends using a set from a normal performance option (like a TA or Z28 spring over a WS6 or a 1LE, although mosty his differentiation here applies to 4th gens that had a much bigger difference between the standard performance spring and the “handling performance package” spring), cut half a coil and then heat the next half that is left red hot and bend it flat with the end of the spring (OH MY ***, USE A TORCH ON A SPRING ?!?! THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END!!! ).

FWIW, I’ve never actually followed his recommendations but judging from what I have done, you’d end up with about the right lowered stance and a fairly mild spring rate, more then stock, but not _really_ stiff that would match well with something like his or Spohn’s monster sway bars (personally, I like thin(ish) sway bars and stiffer spring rates, even on the street, where Herb Adams, spohn, some of the vette tuners… go the other way, eibach 4th gen pro kit springs are actually softer at or near ride height then stock)

 

AND therefore, cut springs will not need any different shock/dampening rates then manufactured springs of the same rate.

BTW, Dean, if you search the board for your own posts on this you’ll find that you’ve clearly stated:
- fewer free coils results in an increase in frequency
- you can’t cut springs to increase spring rate enough for the height drop to prevent bottoming
- both that it makes springs weaker and that it doesn’t in different posts.
- That you need stiffer shocks for cut springs then manufactured springs.
As well as dozens of other things that are at best contradictory, but in most cases just totally and completely wrong.

I do appreciate the fact that after I’ve beaten you over the head with the rate is proportionate to frequency and not to free coils fact a few times you’re finally at least repeating that part (in your last post). Maybe we can train you like a stupid dog… get you to act correctly even if you don’t understand why you’re doing it.

 

I stand by everything I have posted. A few of your "quotes of what I have so called posted" are not true.

You clearly are misinterpeting things.

I can't make it any clearer than my last post- You just don't get it how a coil rate increases rmore rapidly with fewer active coils.

edit- Now to everyone else, I am not saying nor have I ever that it is not OK to cut springs. I am merely desribing the characteristics of what happens to a coil spring rate design when you do cut it. Small cuts are not a problem on larger wind coils. Just do not go more than about 1 full coil.

Heck, I have cut racing coils on the front and rear of my Camaro. I also have very spring rates to begin with, high shock rates and a lightweight nose V6 car to prevent massive suspension travel.

My maximum front wheel suspension travel is 1 1/2" (at the wheel, not the coil) How many of you can say that?