Selecting the right suspension for your build is one of the most important decisions you'll make. With so many options from lowering springs to full blown custom-spec coilovers, many enthusiasts are left with more questions than answers. Since your suspension is how your car communicates with the road or track, its critical that you select a combination of parts that suits your preferred driving characteristics without compromises.
Lowering springs vs coilovers: will springs do?
There has long been a debate about whether lowering springs are a proper way to lower a vehicle, versus full replacement coilovers.
I'm sure you've heard both sides of the debate. Many say lowering springs are the most effective way to lower a car with minimal investment, while some more hard core enthusiasts persist that the correct way to lower a car is with a set of coilovers.
The truth lies somewhere in-between, and it depends on your intent and expectations as an enthusiast and driver.
Lowering springs are in fact a phenomenal way to lower your car by 1" to 2" depending on your selected springs for enthusiasts looking for a visual upgrade to their stock stance.
While its true you can enhance performance even further with a set of coilovers, not every enthusiast needs or even wants to go this far with their build. For many, they want a simple drop while retaining as close to OEM ride quality as possible.
For these types of enthusiasts, lowering springs are more than sufficient. Especially from high-quality spring manufactures such as Eibach, H&R, Swift, D2 or others, you will be in good hands.
Our only word of caution would be on higher mileage shocks, as lowering springs can in fact place slightly more stress on your dampers than OEM length springs.
Think of it like this: you're lowering your car by utilizing a stiffer, shorter spring. The lowering of your car on springs is from the compression of your damper below its natural full extension.
For this reason we ask enthusiasts to at least be cognizant of the health of their current shocks, if they are going to lower their vehicle utilizing lowering springs. For newer cars with less mileage, its not a concern.
For higher mileage shocks, many customers eventually swap their lowering springs to upgraded shocks from Koni, Skunk2, or TruHart when the time comes to replace them.
Lowering springs vs coilovers: what about coilovers?
Many enthusiasts opt to go for full body coilovers out of the gate, skipping lowering springs entirely. A few key reasons that people go this route include:
- Desire to dial in ride height front and rear to exact preferences
- Ability to adjust pre-load independently of ride height
- Emphasis on increasing performance vs retaining OEM characteristics
- Specific use cases such as a drag strip build or club racer build
- Unlimited customization to custom specs: valving, spring rate, etc
I think it would be easiest to break out coilovers into two groupings, as the enthusiasts we've helped over the last decade typically fall into categories: off-the-shelf performance, and built-to-order custom spec.
Coilovers: off-the-shelf performance
Not every enthusiast requires a custom spec outside of what the manufacture builds for off-the-shelf applications. Coilover manufactures such as BC Racing, D2, and Fortune Auto among others spend countless hours conducting R&D as to what works and doesn't work for 95%+ of enthusiasts.
In fact, the vast majority of our customers, and even our team members, use off-the-shelf spec coilovers. There is often no reason to reinvent the wheel.
Our most popular offerings vary by chassis, and we will write up another post doing a deeper dive on the differences between each brand's build philosophy and coilover construction. But for now its best to keep it simple.
For our Honda customers, by far the most popular coilovers in off-the-shelf configurations are from BC Racing, D2, TruHart, Godspeed, and Silver's.
For our Subaru customers, we've seen a skew towards BC Racing, Silver's, Fortune Auto, and even HKS, KW and Ohlins.
If you're looking to purchase a set of coilovers for your build, and you can't think of a specific use case or reason to change valving or spring rates, any of these manufactures offer well balanced off-the-shelf specs.
You can expect your car to have much more feedback from the road, with quicker turn in response, flatter cornering, and the feeling of confidence as you navigate through twisties.
Plus you'll be able to set your ride height to your exact preferences, without impacting pre-load.
Coilovers: custom spec suspension
If you've read this far, you're probably interested in reading more about custom spec suspension. For the purposes of this post, we will keep it at a high level to show the impact you can have on your suspension and chassis with specific tweaks to your coilover build.
Lets cover a few of our most common requested customizations.
Extreme lows. The modification is self-evident from the name. An extreme low modification is focused upon lowered ride height and dialing in a stance build, above all else. This usually involves a shortened shock with less travel, as well as a shorter spring itself. This is a great option for those looking to nail a stance build with very low ride height. Outside of this use case, we would recommend full length shocks and springs to our customers. Typically this modification does not have any extra costs associated with it.
Swift springs. This modification involves the replacement of standard steel springs with Swift's HS5.TW material proprietary springs. Swift springs offer greater travel, the most consistent rate through the spring of any manufacture, and typically enthusiasts notice that their car feels more comfortable at any given spring rate, vs standard springs. We typically recommend Swifts to customers who want "the best," who plan on tracking their car, or otherwise are emphasizing all aspects of ride quality to their build. They're well worth the ~$350 up-charge for enthusiasts that fall into these buckets.
Digressive vs linear valving. Most coilover kits in the $1k price range feature linear valving, which is the industry standard for coilover manufactures. If you've ever ridden in a car with BC Racing BRs, or a set of D2s, you've experienced and felt linear valved dampers.
Over the last five years especially, there has been a push on the higher end of the spectrum to include digressive valving technology. This is featured on BC Racing's DS series coilovers, as well as Silver's NEOMAX and Fortune Auto 500 and 510 coilovers, among others. Typically digressive valved coilovers start closer to $1.5k and run all the way to $4k+!
But why would someone want to spend extra on digressively valved dampers?
Imagine you are your coilover, driving down the road. You begin to turn into a corner smoothly. The car inspires you with confidence, and you feel glued to the road. This is a great example of low-speed dampening. Both linear and digressive coilovers will feel similar in this controlled, "low-speed" scenario. Low speed refers to the rate of change in suspension movement, its smooth and controlled.
But now imagine you are that same coilover, further down the road. You now experience pot holes, bumps in the road, or otherwise unfavorable conditions. Our daily driven enthusiasts know this struggle all too well.
These large, instantaneous shocks to the suspension are what is known as a high-speed event. You can imagine, that it is very different to absorb a pot-hole in a flash, versus a sustained, smooth cornering event. You've probably felt or heard of coilovers being rough for daily driving. Often times enthusiasts are referring to the handling of road imperfections by their coilovers.
Where a digressive damper has an advantage is during these events. An example on the track would be hitting the rumble strip during a corner. These jarring events are better handled with digressive dampers, as they can absorb that high impact event and blow it off without transmitting excess vibration through to the cabin.
The digressive nature comes out in the dampers ability to quickly react and blow off excess road forces, to keep you inspired with confidence even on uneven or imperfect road and track conditions.
Does this mean linear is bad?
No, linear valved coilovers are not bad, and they remain the industry standard. The majority of cars on coilovers today are on linear valved shocks, and for good reason: they simply work.
But similar to Swift spring upgrades on coilovers.. digressive valving sure is nice to have if you are looking for "the best" even if it means an extra $400-500 to get into a set of digressively valved dampers.