I'm looking to buy a set of front SSS 5.5, 12" front spring and I really don't want go with weight jacks, I was wondering if anyone runs them like that and how much drop should I expect, I kinda don't want to go lower then 1.5 compared to stock.

 

Your question is pretty much unanswerable because you did not list any spring weight or know the exact exact wheel rates and motion ratio of you exact car. It is not tat easy to just ask a question like this, spring rates are a trial and error thing when it comes to balance and ride height for each particular car. you are better off buying a lowering kit from a manufacturer like Eibach, etc - but that is still a crap shoot ith ride heights based on vehicle options and differences with modifications etc.

a 12" spring is too short though, even in a 1100lb rate. Your stock rate is probably somewhere near 550-750 range and your stock free height is probably somewhere around 14". Your motion leverage is 42% on the front suspension so for every .42" you cut off a "compressed spring" (note I did not say free height spring) your car will drop 1" on the front fender lip.

 

SSS are not very well known for their quality. I'd spend a few extra bucks on eibach or hypercoil.

I have 5.5x11x1200lb springs in my car. With the LT1 in and no AC I had to cut ~1/8 to 1/4 coil, mostly the inactive portion of the spring.

The driverside on my car has always sat higher, so I used some slit heater hose and the factory spring spacer on the driver side to get the ride height right.

You want to cut both sides equally, otherwise the spring rates will be off side to side. Andy Hollis's facebook page has a really good article on purposely running different spring rates side to side, but I that's for a civic with bad weight differential side to side. For a basic setup I'd keep them the same.

I can't remember the ride height, but the car was pretty low. I'd suggest running a shaft mounted bumpstop or you'll be riding on the factory one all the time. Ground control has cheap ones.

I like this setup because it doesn't have the extra weight of a weight jack setup, but you will get very well practiced at taking the front springs off. If somebody knows the weight please share it, but I'm guessing its easily 5-10lbs.

 

Roostmeyer, not to start a big debate but where did you get your info from. SSS has quite a good reputation. They are what I used on my car (several of them to that fact). They had alot better reputation than Eibach- Eibach got famous going after the import route

I also had a very lightweight V6 car with 13" tall 800lb springs that I cut off 3/4" of free height and without isolators this car was slammed. you do this on a V8 car and you will not be able to drive it. My front fender lip height was 24 3/4". with a 12 1/4" free height spring @ 825lbs on a very light car.

Hypercoil has a tradition of being very precise on rate equivilance. They have been the racers choice for many years now.

 

Another data point, I ran 11"x5.5 900lb springs and they were way too low. I ended up using the rear spring isolator up front to get to a live-able height. 12" tall 900lb springs may be usable with enough weight off the car. With stock weight it's tough to say.

 

No it still is not livable. You are directing this person to spend his money poorly. he asked for a ride height about 1.5" lower than stock, you are putting him about 4" + lower than stock

 

gp90gta- My best GUESS for your car would be to go to a 13" tall 850lb spring with the isolator in. From there if you are too tall then remove the isolator and replace it with a little piece of heater hose, that will drop you about an 1" aprox. from there you would have to trim the spring. better having to do it a few times to get the correct desired height, rather than buying too short a spring to begin with.

 

Dean,

I think they're okay, just better stuff out there for just a little more money.

http://www.corner-carvers.com/forums...hlight=landrum

Not sure if you have to login to read, so here's a snippet:
I read that thread and thought I'd try landrum out. I had bought 5x8x300lb suspension specialist springs for use with allstar weight jacks. The car was super loose even with a 19mm rear bar, so I ended up with 250lb landrum springs. The landrums had at least 2 less active coils for a lower rate spring. I never weighed both to compare but I should have. They were considerably more money, but they came with a sheet showing free rate, loaded rate, etc. and were w/in a few pounds of rate. That's for an oddball size 8x5" rear spring, luckily there are a lot more options out there for 11 and 12" long 5.5 front springs.

For a car where weight and having the rate exactly on isn't a big deal I'd run them with impunity. In this case it looks like pitstopusa is w/in a few $'s for the SSS to the hypercoil.

 

Funny, that sounds confrontational to me.

With the poor motion ratio on these cars a hundred pounds or so off the front of a car will come up with completely different ride heights. At that time my car was a bit lighter than stock, and now it isn't even close. There may be 13" springs out there for racing, but I haven't seen them before.

gp90gta, Are you factory weight, full AC etc? Are you looking for a little sportier ride than stock or trying to keep it close to factory?

Should you get a spring that's a little too soft or short you can also drill a hole and put a bolt through the spring pocket to re-index the spring. As long as you don't go overboard and change the springs installed motion ratio you'll raise the car up some.

 

yes SSS technology has never improved with time, but for what we are using in these cars the SSS springs are very typical in spring wire quality, size, and ramping angle. The Hypercoils have gone to using some advanced metal technology and have been able to lighten the wire considerably on the coilover springs as well a conventionals, but I do not think he is going to find a pigtail spring from them. With what these chassis are, a little spring weight is really not a big deal. now going to a coilover 2 1/2" spring where wheel leverage rates are lower- any variance in rate equivilance is alot more critical between lets say 350 lbs springs on both fronts with a +or- 25 lbs compared to our aprox 700-900 lb rate desired range +or- 25lbs with conventional springs


all ferreous metals for the most part will rust if not protected, so that part does not concern me other than the author might be advising that SSS coatings are not very good. I never had issues with mine in 15 years. I bought mine back in about 1990. if the author of that post was using coilover SSS springs, it is very likely he had shock body contact which was common in 2 1/2" spring design until recent barrel spring technology came into play

 

Thanks guys, yes my car has a/c, weight with me in the car right now is 3756, was thinking of going with 900lbs for the fronts and progressives in the rear 150/350 with weight jacks, I really didn't want to cut holes in the rails and I'm not a fan of the GC ones, but it looks like I might not have a choice to make it the way I want it and this car is by no means a corner carver, I just cant stand the 3" wheel gap to fender, and these are stock ws6 with 100k on them, more or less I'm just going for a better look without losing to much suspension travel.

 

What do you have against running the GC setup?

My car weighs 3600 even with me and the spare tire crap in it (3450+150, A/C, smog, full interior) and I had the BZW front springs (like 550 front and the progressive rear) and went to linear 850/175's, 8"/9", with GC weight jacks and can go from slammed on the bump stops to above factory height. Ride quality is stiffer but very livable and I doubt there is much less travel as long as you maintain bump stop clearance. Adjusting it is a little annoying since you have to lay on your back, but the fronts can be done on the ground and for the back you just jack the corner up, spin the adjuster and away you go.

 

The rear style GC weight jackers are fine on the rear of these cars because they are easy to access. Most other cars do not have the access these have so GC style adjusters can be a real pain in the butt. I have an early Brabus Mercedes I am currently fabricating an entire weight jack swivelcup setup for because the only thing that is availiable on the market for thee cars has been the GC style weight jacks- you have to pull the entire coil spring to adjust them each time which is rediculous. But not the case for the rear of a 3rd gen.

 

Sounds like you may be better off with just cutting your current stock or some IROC springs.

Ditching the factory bumpstops for cut down shaft mounted stops will gain a good amount of travel. After that it takes taller strut mounts and extended balljoints to deal with the a-arm to k-member interference. That should get you really close to hitting the tire in the fender.

 

How much can you safely cut off of the strut mounted bump stops?
I'm running the Ground Control ones and I don't think I have much travel, if any. I had about one inch to them with the fenders at 26.5", took about 5 rounds out of the front weight jacks today. I can't feel anything just driving it, but they are progressive so I'm not sure that I would just cruising on the street. I've got the Hotpart strut mounts but stock spindles and stock spec ball joints.

 

I have mine cut down to just past the first necked down portion. The leaves them to be only an inch or so tall.

If your just lowering for looks longer is probably better as long as you do have some travel before they hit. For handling I think you want enough travel to keep the shock off of the bump stops in normal roll otherwise they're going to add to the front wheel rate. In general the longer the bumpstop the less it'll upset the car in a bump.

 

What do you think about using spring spacers? And do you think Landrum springs are a better choice, there really not that much more in price.

 

Part # ID End Type Wire D Loaded height Load Free height
5276 4 90 Square Tangential 0.656 10.5 1981 303 17.05
5596 4 90 Square Tangential 0.671 11 1440 346 15.19
5598 4 90 Square Tangential 0.671 11 1520 346.5 15.38
5600 4 90 Square Tangential 0.671 11 1600 347 15.63
5602 4 90 Square Tangential 0.671 11 1680 347 15.88
5604 4 90 Square Tangential 0.671 11 1760 347 16.00
5606 4 80 Square Tangential 0.687 11 1530 421 14.63
5608 4 80 Square Tangential 0.687 11 1640 424 14.88
5610 4 80 Square Tangential 0.687 11 1750 424 15.19
5642 4 80 Square Tangential 0.687 11 1860 420 15.20
5660 4 80 Square Tangential 0.718 10.75 1538 598 13.26
5662 4 85 Square Tangential 0.75 10.75 1690 748 13.10
5664 4 85 Square Tangential 0.765 10.75 1863 707 13.18
6486 4 80 Square Tangential 0.671 11 1935 343 16.63

That didn't copy and past all that well.

Assuming a .45 spring motion ratio (the leverage of the weight of the body on the spring) a .675 shorter loaded height should lower your car 1.5". So you want a 10-10.25" loaded height.

Big problem with all this is guessing the load. Some of the p/n's above are for v6 cars, but assuming 1800lb load on the spring, you'll be lower than 1.5" from stock with a 900lb 12" tall spring. I think I'd suggest going with at least a 1000lb spring and know you may have to do some light trimming from there just to make sure the car isn't too low.

I haven't used spring spacers before beside the stock isolator and heater hose, but if you can keep them on the spring I don't see any reason why they wouldn't work.

EDIT: Just a note, 1863lb for the stiffest iroc springs are probably a bit high considering the 4x4 ride height people have gotten after swapping in new ones. Maybe 1700lb load is a better guess.

 

That is not a correct formula for checking effect spring rate. The load on an individual front wheel is about 830-900 range based on the car option. The unsprung weight wheel probably averages about 100-120 lbs so the actual cornerweight on the coil is about 750lbs and the average movement (travel range in dynamic ride motion) is about 3" on average, more like 4 for stock cars. you take the motion ratio at .42% and the coil angle at 90* which are both close. he needs a wheel rate of about 750 lbs which is the 5662 at 13inches WITHOUT isolator height also installed. Which is exactly what I said about in my guess. I was suggesting a little higher to be a little better performing with lighter swaybars so an 800-850 would give a little room for errror in case he needed to trim them slightly more.

 

Went and got my calculator...

750lbs (the spring load you came up with above) /.42=1786lbs of static load on the spring, or right between the two numbers I said up above. The stiffer of the two factory iroc springs are 748lb/in with a 13.1 free height. Most of the people who put new ones end up even higher than their older springs that have creeped.

at 1786lbs, the spring compresses 2.38" and is at 10.72" loaded height, which is damn close to the #'s given in the table.

900lb 12" tall springs with the same 1786lb load will sit at 10.02" loaded height or roughly 1.74" drop with a .42 spring motion ratio. And yes this is assuming you use the same spring isolator's as stock.

1000lb 12" tall springs with the same load would sit at 10.24" loaded height or 1.21" drop.

EDIT: Just for clarity, I'm assuming 10.75" loaded spring height is "stock" height.

 

I see how you are figuring it now. I do it on a calculator that yeilds different figures. I thought you were talking corner weights and I was thinking you had the total nose weight of the car calculated only on one spring rather than two individual springs. I was trying to figure out the chart but you diod say it did not translate well onto the post.

That is the forst I have ever seen any documented chart of "compress height" spring figures on 3rd gens. but like you also say, it factors WITH the isolator which i never have run one. I only know my cars coil free height, rate and what feder height I had and pretty much guestimate off of that based on my car's nose weight of a V6 compared to a little heavier V8's. it all really is a crap shoot becasue things never work in the real world like they are suppose to on paper. That is why I like to recommend a margin of error when someone spends their money- that way a mistake does not come back on me. I tell them up front it is a conservative guess and I would rather be good -to-too high, rahter than Good -to-too low range in a purchase. We never know all the exact variables.

I know what my car was becasue I calculated it many years ago when I bought the springs from SSS. We are talking aprox 1992 that I figured all of that and new Id have to probably trim the ones I bought a little. I did it twice with those springs, I installed them first to check them, then I calculated what I had- pulled them and trimmed them slightly, and put them back together- it stayed that way until 2009 when the ex wife managed to get it stolen after she was awarded it in the divorce- I laugh every time I think or write that.