All About Lowering

[MBK89]

This article aims to answer any questions you may have about the best way to lower your Civic.

What It Looks Like:

Just so you know what I'm talking about below, this image illustrates the various parts of a simple suspension system.

Why Lower Your Car?

It's all about your centre of gravity. The higher your centre of gravity, the easier it is for your car to slide on a bend or even roll over. The higher your car, the worse the road holding. Needless to say, you don't want to end up like this:

But lets not all forget the other reason. Lowering your car is one of the best looking things you can do. Here is a nice lowered Civic:

OK! Let's Slam It!

No, no and no. Just because your friend managed to drop his car 40mm without any problems, does not mean you can. The amount you can lower your car depends on so many different factors including the weight of your engine, size of your wheels and tyres and even your own body weight.

The only way you can find the optimum lowering height for your vehicle is with trial and error. Lower it slightly, drive it for a while and lower it again until you find a good compromise.

So What Are My Options?

Let's have a look at all the different options available then.

Cut Your Springs

Why can't I just cut my springs a bit to lower my ride height?

OK this is just one big no. Springs on car are "progressive". It basically means the more you compress it, the harder it becomes to compress further. If it takes 30lbs to compress the spring half an inch, it would take 100lbs to compress it another half an inch. Why is this important? When you hit a bump, the springs compress allowing the wheel to move smoothly over it. If you cut the springs, suddenly that small bump isn't enough to compress the spring, so the car will jump over the bump. As you can imagine this is extremely dangerous since your wheels will have less contact with the road (not to mention you'll have a broken back from the jolt).

Buy Lowering Springs

OK I won't cut my springs, I'll buy shorter springs and leave the original shocks.

Better, but sorry still a no. By lowering your car, you are compressing the shock and forcing it to travel a shorter distance, but at a higher frequency. Shocks are made to dampen the bounce, and each shock has a certain operating range. Your original shocks are not meant to be compressed for long periods of time, while at the same time travelling short distances very quickly, which is what would happen with shorter springs. It might feel fine to start with, but you will quickly boil the oil inside the piston housing (having the shock travel really quickly) and thus blow it out and render it useless. If you're going along at any speed when this happens, you're screwed.

Buy Both New Springs and New Shocks (coilovers)

OK fine I'll buy new springs and new shocks.

Now we're talking the only way to guarantee your comfort and safety in a lowered vehicle is by installing new springs and shocks, preferably together from the same manufacturer. It's costly, but always worth while in the end.

Final Thoughts:

- The lower your car, the stiffer the ride becomes. Why? Simply because there's less room for the suspension to travel.

- You can buy adjustable and non-adjustable systems. The adjustable ones are more expensive, but you have ull control over your ride height.

I hope this cleared up most questions. If you have any regarding this article, just reply below.

[supermike]

Nice wee right up there! Although you missed one other "way" of lowering your car. My mate decided is EG civic wasnt low enough instead of forking out for coilovers he took his lowered springs off, clamped them in a spring compressor and then applied a lot of heat to the spring! Oh dear! Needless to say that car bounced off the road into a tree.......

[jalesi2001]

Ouch!!

[supermike]

Aye it was a fair mess! He was ok though which i suppose is the main thing, he soon learnede his lesson about DIY suspension mods

[D15]

Lowering your civic is a fantastic idea. I have mine lowered by around 40mm on KONI STR.T shocks and springs. It has made a tremendous difference to the handling, but is still very livable. If it wasnt for my 3'' exhaust I would have no issues whatsoever.

Quite easy to change yourself on the MB cars, I would however, highly reccomend purchasing some Irwin, self gripping socket heads to get the bolts off, because they will be siezed on good and propper, as such you will also need to buy new bolts.

All in though, its the best £300(ish) I have spent on my car, massive difference.

Good post as well, you have to be silly to simply cut your springs.

[Dave]

The koni's seem to be a good choice for the mb's

[weetec]

try and steer away from the koni streetline kits., you really cant argue with price if your on a budget but i bought them for my eg9 before my mb6 a while ago and they were a bit too bouncy. like the man said dont for gods sake cut your springs or lower your car too much with massive alloys, the result is as follows, 1=slammed car

2=17" alloys

3=high speed + bad pot hole in road.................the result, you end up with the wheel stuck in the arch,...the rest i will leave to your imagination.

[matej]

nice write-up....when I was de-tuning my car after purchase I found out the previous owner from germany only changed the springs to some blue AP ones (in the MOT papers the drop was supposed to be 40mm) and left the original Honda shocks. If I will ever drop my car I want to do it the proper way. And I guess that won't be as soon since the local roads needs to improve quite a bit to be comfortable on lowered car. And I want to keep my MB6 as my daily driver for as long as possible. Planning to get an EG with JDM DC5 swap for trackday action and AP1 S2000 for weekends. But that is a long way from now, probably in a year or two if all goes well.

[Ralston]

Don't know how many of you have purchased this kit, but I currently have it installed on my VTi-S. After installing the kit I noticed the car did not sit right at all, so I took measurements from the center caps to the wheel arch, and cotacted EuroPerformance who then contacted Koni for me.

And ITS THE WRONG SPRING RATES for the 1.8 vti engines. Other models with lighter engines will be fine, but there is a problem with the kit for the 1.8 vti MB6, and after Koni admitted this, there then produced custom springs for my car which were then sent to me.

EuroPerformance did a VERY POOR job of helping out with expenses, as obviously had to pay to change the springs again, and then had to deliver the original Koni springs to the collection depo!

PLEASE BEAR THIS IS MIND IF YOU ARE THINKING OF GETTING THEM - MAKE SURE YOUR SUPPLIER SUPPLIES THE CORRECT KIT!!!!

My car now sits as it should, although not quite as stiff as I would like but still provides comfortable day time driving, and speed bumbs etc are not a problem! I also have the MG ZS180 rear ARB fitted and have to say this helps a tiny bit, but no where near as much as some people have been suggesting!

[Zuissi]

I bought new wheels for the next summer! Looks like I need a lot of lowering!

How much I would need mates? 30 mm? 40 mm? Please Help!