parchisi

Well, I got tired from my front end being higher than the rear, so figuring I had nothing to lose, I tried cutting a coil from the Steeda comp springs in front. It brought the front end down nicely about 3/4" and gave it a perfect stance.

Driving home from the auto hobby shop I noticed some rattling/clunking noise from the front, and turning off a road, I hit a dip and BAM, the left front bottomed out. Left front bottomed out again going through an intersection. Took it apart at home to see what was up and noticed the left front strut is blown and it also wobbles quite a bit as well.

Backing up in time, at the shop, when taking the nut off the top of the strut, I had a worker there help me out and before I noticed, he put a vice grips on the top and crushed the tip where the adjuster goes in for the Tokico D-Specs.

My theory is that this may have caused the strut to lose pressure, and then the bottoming out caused structural damage to loosen the strut. It could be that cutting the springs caused the strut to bottom out easier, but it only lowered it 3/4", I would think that the strut should be able to handle that. Final theory is that the strut had just blown on its own and lowering it just made the problem apparent.

Any thoughts?

chrumck

How much did you cut out. A full coil? Was the spring sitting square in both upper and lower perch?

parchisi

I cut a full coil from the bottom where the coil kinda flattened out a bit. So cutting off that part made it sit slightly different on the strut when uncompressed, but when compressed it seemed to seat just fine.

I checked the other side, and the strut was just fine, so I'm going to try to find where I can buy just one strut, replace it and hope for the best. If it breaks again, then I guess I'll know the problem and I'll just bite the bullet for new springs.

2008vistablue

dang....I was thinking about buying D specs and lowering springs but an concerned it would bottom out also

parchisi

Dont' worry about it, its fine. The strut blew becaue the top adjustment part got crushed. I replaced the strut already and its just fine! The strut blew because of human error, not due to a defect or bad design.

chrumck

I'm very interested how will your suspension perform after cutting the comp springs. I had a sneaky plan to do that too, but I'm going with sports for now. Let us know If you don't run into any problems after you drive the car for a while.

parchisi

Well, like I said before, I cut one coil off the bottom and now the fender gap front/back is pretty much even, maybe ever so slightly lower in the front which is good. After replacing the strut, I've driven it for about a week on the street and there haven't been any problems. I've very happy with the new stance and there has been no noticeable difference is ride quality.

If I were to push the car to the limit I would suspect there would be a slight increase in understeer, since cutting springs effectively increases the spring rate, but we'll see.