Hey guys wondering what yuo guys use for springs to get the car low. i mean real low
I know our cars are similar to ae86 with cutting the spindles and so on for coilovers. This car will be my NON race car. no coilovers.. I just want it to look the part. I have a fully caged ae86 with 5g's in the suspension on greddy coilovers etc etc and a trailered 240 racecar that i can jump into when i want to drift/race around.

However all the pics i have seen of dudes cars on here the cars are real high. I will be running 15x8 0 offset with 195-50/15's and i want to be real flush. what aftermarket springs do you guys use and how much should i cut to get it lower.

Also i have an 85 gsl-se and all the aftermarket shocks i find says "excludes GSL-SE" so what aftermarket shocks are you running.

Does anyone make vented fiberglass hoods for our cars that dont look like mariah stuff (no offense just not into their kits)


thanks a bunch
matt

here is pics of my corolla and 240 so you guys know i am not some dreamer.


240sx




how low my corolla is (no i dont want that low)

 

"all the pics i have seen of dudes cars on here the cars are real high"

Our cars don't bottom out all the time, like the ones in the photos above. It is just common sense and a way to make the cars driveable, not looking like some kind of Tonka toy.

Ray

 

The boing-boing ride necessary to make that low drop work on the street just looks foolish. Please don't drop your rex just for that look...it just looks wrong...

 

Lowing a 1st gen makes about as much sense to me as installing a V8. Please don't do it.

 

All aftermarket springs for 1st Gens only lower the car about an inch. If you want to go lower you will have to cut them. There are springs in Australia that lower the car more BUT shipping cost would be more than the springs.
As for your wheel size, IT WON"T FIT......
The GSL-SE can not use zero offset wheels without them sticking out past the fenders and rubbing if you go low.
Hope this helps...
L8R

 

lwnslw thanks for the sensible comment the rest of you c'mon

no i dont want my car as low as say my corolla thats a track car. It is dropped say about 4.5 in the front and 5" in the rear that is ridiculous. i still drive it on the street but i pay for it.
My FB is a cruiser. i WILL roll the fenders or get flares to fit 15x8 0

1" drop is unacceptable. doesnt anyone on this forum fit good offsets.
i have 14x7 0 offset on there now in the rear. it sticks out a little but some rolling will fix that.

i am not gonna spend all this money for springs/ shocks that wont lower the car 1" isnt lowering a car its wasting time!
so if anyone is rolling fenders and cutting springs please post up i would love to chat.

anyone know any importers that can get good hoods? REamimeya? or am i stuck cutting up my stock hood. what about rivet on flares?
I dont want to do this 3 times and the car goes for paint in one month

 

i like low but i dont know what do do with a rx. but my bu (2000 malibu) the frame sits link 3 inches of the ground it scraps like a *****

 

G-Force Engineering's red dot springs are the lowest rear springs that I have used or seen; I use those on the rear of my race car. On the front of my road racer, I use coil overs.

For the front of my street car, I cut 1/2 turn off the stock springs, and it has a nice rake to it now.

 

ReSpeed offers a coil-over kit, that may work for you.

http://www.mrcmfg.com/respeed/

B Waits posts here often and they give GREAT customer service.

It is $125.00 for the kit, workmanship is great.

 

You can easily lower your front 2" or more and rear 3" or more. I'd recommend cutting some off of your rear bumpstops if you go fairly low.

 

Gee - sorry we're all noobs compared to you...

 

so your not going to put coilovers on but want the drop/look of a full coil over set up ?

 

Here's a cool way to lower them, use Sumitoma HTR 200 175/50/13's:





The car bottoms out on lane markers and you get a back ache getting in and out. I have a set for sale, very reasonable.

Ray

 

If you drop much above 1 - 2" you will cause rear end binding problems because of the nature of the Mazda link system. Unless you plan on a trilink + panhard bar to rid yourself of the upper links and put bumpsteer blocks up front to compensate for the adjusted geometry... lowering the car past 1 - 2" is actually detrimental to handling. Eibach makes springs that will drop it 3.5" but you will need to cut your rear bump stops in half. I have some laying around and they made the RX look like this:




In this configuration the car had major snap oversteer issues. I since raised it back to the 1" drop configuration and it handles great. I currently run:

Eibach springs
GC front coilovers
GC Adjustable Camber / Caster plates
Tokiko Illumina 5 ways shocks all the way around
Full poly bushings with pb&j mod upper link modification
All new Moog steering components

I will say, without a doubt, having it slammed was horrific not just for ride comfort but handling was a joke. However... our IT7 car was slammed to a 3.5" drop and it handled great with the panhard / tri link setup. Basically, unless you intend on doing the panhard setup... it is just a rice attempt if the drop is too much and you ignore the obvious geometry issues.

 

How costly and difficult is that PANHARD setup? I've seen that mentioned a few times but I really need to research what all that is.

On a side note, my car is dropped the 1" (with an unknown spring from P/O) and the car sits so fricken low it's a hassle. I have 15x7 (~40mm offset) (195/55/15) and they are just about the exact height of the wheel well, but no tuck and that is without a rider inside. Another inch would probably do it look wise.

Those GC coil overs required rear end bracing correct?

 

These were going to be my next two mods! But, then again, mine's barely a first gen anymore...

 

Lower more than an inch in the front and your struts will bottom out on bumps or hard cornering.

I Solo my car every summer and I wouldn't want it much lower than it is right now. During turns that track through bumps and rises in the pavement I use every bit of the suspension travel available to me. Before I had my struts cut above the perch to give more travel, the front end of my car bottomed all the time.

 

What swaybars were you running?
My car is dropped 3.75" at the rear with bumpstops cut 25mm and thicker swaybar. Some people disagree with having a thick swaybar at the rear and some even say take it off completely. I run a 21mm rear swaybar from memory and it seems fine to me. A 7 will almost always handle better with the back lower than the front (has been proven by Whiteline during testing)

 

If you want flares, Datsun 240Z Flares should fit with minor modifications. That's going to be my first attempt

 

I'm running the stock bars right now, I was thinking about removing the rear bar entirely. The PB&J mod on the upper links really did help but you can still tell a little binding is present on hard cornering but it is MUCH better than stock was. I was wondering about lowering the rear more than the front... I've seen others do this and wasn't really sure the reasoning for it. I still have a lot of playing to do with it to get it to handle the best as this is a recent setup ( winter's project ) When I went back to the 1" drop it just felt more stable on corners etc... this isn't a fact though and could very well have been purely more things needed to be done to stabilize at such a lower ride height.

 

ISC racing sells a good setup and isn't too bad. You will need to have some welding skills or have someone weld it for you. The GC coil overs only run on the front, the rear's you have to change out the springs to change ride height.

 

I want these. do you have part number? want to sell?

I spoke to the guys at REspeed last night(totally awesome dude)
and we discussed the binding issues in the rear.
this car is a cruiser like i said with an ocasional track day(if ever)

I looked into the watts linkage problem and it seems to be along the lines of lowering a corolla too much. In corolla world it is all controlled by lower links and pinion angle changes way too much essentially causing binding and snap oversteer.

Fixing this on corolla is easy using and extender peice commonly reffered to as a traction bracket.

However with this car i am gonna slam it like sick crazy on the fing ground slam it.

i will hit everything drag baby's by my oil cooler and and highside on every speed bump. thanks for all of your concerns though.

 

The watts linkage is not so much the problem... it's the upper 2 links because they are not symentrical with the lower links unlike the Ford 4 link. They don't move at the same rates when cornering hard and naturally bind because of the angle the differential moves. Unless both upper links are completely removed and a tri-link is installed it will bind. The lower links are fine and don't need to be modified. There is essentially no good way to fix the upper 2 links other than remove them completely and do the panhard bar / trilink. Your traction bracket is what is meant, I believe, when we say Panhard / Tri link and it solves this problem. You can get a panhard / trilink at http://www.iscracing.net.

The PB&J mod does help a little and makes it more manageable if you keep the upper 2 links but it still exists because as it binds the rubber is drilled out and can flex far more than normal. The frontend geometry is maintained with some bumpsteer blocks and are not hard to install... Respeed makes some. I found no problems at all with the pinion angle when I slammed mine.

I would do some searches on trilink, panhard, PB&J mod, and rear binding to get a lot more information on resolution steps to do this right.

 

However with this car i am gonna slam it like sick crazy on the fing ground slam it.

i will hit everything drag baby's by my oil cooler and and highside on every speed bump. thanks for all of your concerns though.

...hope the Ford 429 V8 conversion works out also, so you can put a real shaker scoop hood on the abomination...

 

I'm with you Mario, I think we should congratulate Matt on his sense of adventure and creative spirit. Then he can get back to us on the results.

I know he is going to hit some bumps and that will send good money chasing the money he needs to spend now, but I don't see how the shaker scoop is going to end up landing in his abdomin. Although with the V8 in there you might be right.

Let us know how it goes Matt!