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Most people seem to confuse a lowered, stiffly sprung car with one that handles well. In an ideal world with glass smooth roads and no speed humps that might hold true. However, on the typical Aussie road, little could be further from the truth. Over corrugations, "stiff" cars tend to "hop", making continual corrections necessary and brake lock ups easy. It may also be dangerous in the wet. An overly stiff suspension can also lead to excessive tire wear or tires squealing at the slightest provocation.

However, a lowered spring must be stiffer than a stock spring. Why? Because the spring has less time (travel) in which to absorb a bump. If the spring rate was the same the car would forever be bouncing off it's bump stops. The solution for most cars is to lower the car only 2" or one third of the vehicles full bump stop clearance (measured at full droop). So a car with a total of 6" of bump stop clearance can be lowered 2". If you're after a really low car the solution is a set of drop spindles, allowing 2-4 inches of drop without sacrificing the factory ride, retaining stock bump stop clearance, and using factory springs. But on the street, lowered springs are one of the least effective ways to improve handling.

Actually, the first step in good handling is to make sure all the factory stuff is in good order. Ball joints, tie rods, idler arm etc. are essential to the vehicles handling. Ignore these basics and the car won't handle no matter what you do. While you're under there have a good look at all the bushes. Getting to some if them maybe a pain, but the good news is that most of them aren't expensive to replace. Replacing them with poly bushes is a good idea if it's handling you're after. Poly bushes flex less and last longer than rubber, but ride can suffer. Less flex means the suspension geometry stays more consistent throughout your vehicles travel.

The next step is a quality wheel alignment. Most of the time a wheel alignment only alters the cars toe. That isn't enough. A quality wheel alignment means checking and adjusting camber, caster and toe.

Another fallacy is that the spring should control body roll. Wrong! That's the job of the sway bar. The added bonus is that a sway bar is much less detrimental to the vehicle's ride.

Matched, good quality tires are also important, but good quality doesn't necessarily mean expensive.

Twining the front or rear sway bars is an easy way of doubling roll stiffness. It can be very cheap too if wreckers' parts are used.

Here is a very basic table of vehicle handling characteristics:

Need more info? I've written a very comprehensive article on suspension, but it refers to R/C cars. I'll eventually re-write it for full size cars, but in the mean time since most of it still applies, click here.

Any problems?, bertrand@omen.net.au.