I've been wondering about this question for awhile, and I've searched pretty hard to find the answers but have not found anything complete.

What drop is the optimum height for performance? I know this is a very open ended question, so I will try to ask for something a bit more specific for myself, but if anyone is willing to answer it as technically as possible, I would love to read it (suspension geometry, center of gravity, body roll, etc).

I have a set of ksports which I will be putting on my 98 civic ex 4 door, they are 10f 7r, and I have no other suspension mods. I will be putting in a subframe brace and an itr rear sway bar eventually, but as of now the suspension is very stock.

With just the coilovers and with those spring rates, how many inches should I drop the car for it to handle to the best of its abilities? How tight or soft should I go front and rear?

I basically want it to handle as neutral as possible with minimal bouncing or hopping. Thank you in advance for any help.

 

bump

 

Optimum height from a performance aspect is as low as you can go before you start running into limitations due to suspension components like bottoming out the wheels, bottoming out the shocks, or riding on bumpstops.

Nobody is going to tell you with any accuracy at all how low you can go with your setup. You can experiement and find out, and when you are done you get the car corner balanced to top it all off. The handling of the car will depend on more things than just the ride height so I would not put too much effort into it, especially not for a street car.

 

I have been thinking about this too lately and I came to the conclusions based on my own whacked out ideas that only an inch or so below stock would be optimal...right? Because that is where the suspension was design to be and the geometry would remain optimal...right? All of this pertains to a street car, because otherwise, all new suspension components would be made to make it as low as mechanically possible.

 

The factory suspension was designed with compliance and ride quality in mind, not performance. There is no reason to limit yourself by including ride quality constraints when you're talking about performance.

There is no magic number. Each car and driver can vary in too many ways to come up with a general answer. If you're talking about approximations, I suppose 1" lower is a good point to start from.

 

i agree with PIC, it all comes down to preferences and driving style...start off with soft spring rates or mild and work your way to your driving style.

 

Ok, maybe this is a better question. People always talk about a car being too low and it won't handle well. At what point does the drop become too low for performance? My coilovers are 10f 7r and I want to have a good idea of how far to drop.

So far, from PIC I have one inch. I will start with that, but if I could get a closer answer that would be great. It's a 98 honda civic ex 4dr with the stock d16y8.

 

By "too low" that usually means that you've reduced available suspension travel, and so you increase the risk of bottoming out various suspension components during compression. As I said in the first post, that is the limiting in factor on how low you should go.

A common example is the upper control arm hitting the shock tower because you set the car too low. What will happen is the UCA does not have enough space to move up when the corner compresses, so it hits the top of the shock tower and that will disrupt your handling, and the suspension becomes infinitely stiff because the UCA has hit the shock tower.

Other examples include the piston "bottoming out" inside the shock body and the tire hitting the fenderwell. What rates you run will play a large role in determining when and where the bottoming out occurs on your car. Maybe someone running those coilovers with those rates in a similar car can chime in with personal experience, but again you can see why its hard to provide any sort of accurate appromixation for you.

Its much easier and more reliable to simply to play around with the height of the car on your own, rather than rely on something you hear on a message board from someone who might or might not know the correct answer to your question.

 

For me and what I have noticed 2.25" is the lowest I would go with the Integra without using Skunk2 upper hats and doing some fender love.

 

PIC, I will start at 1" and then work my way down. I'm trying to get my car to corner as neutrally as possible, so it would help if I knew some ways to do this. I'm sorry, but I really am a suspension noob. I was planning on getting an ITR rear sway bar and an ASR subframe brace, but from there I have no idea what to do or what I'm looking for.

I've never even really driven in a car that handles well so I don't even know what good handling feels like...

And DVP, thank you, I will try to keep it between 1" and 2.25".

 

You will certainly know when you are bottoming out the suspension. When the UCA hits, you'll hear the loud clunk from the top of the shock tower. It might even leave a nice dent if it hits hard enough.

A lot contributes to the way the car handles, and ride height will take a back seat to your selection of spring rates, the damping of the shocks, corner-balancing the car, tires and driver input. A larger rear swaybar will combat understeer, but should be used as a supplement your spring rates (as a tuning device), and not as a replacement.

A good way to find out what you are looking for is to get the car on a track where you can safely push it to its limits. Lapping days, test and tune days, auto-x, and other local hpde's are a great way to do this in a safe and fun environment, where you will be around others who are in the same situation and can provide advice in person and in real time. You can learn a lot about what your car can and can't do this way. The Civic can be an extremely competent handler with the proper parts.

 

2.25 is way too low. SilentEdge, you were right about too low altering your suspesnion geometry. When the car is too low, in a turn the car might have drastic increase or decrease of toe, or maybe even camber in a certain part of the car which will suddenly change how the car feels in a turn.
And to get a more or less nutral setup, get a stock teg rear swaybar. With the itr one you will be more on the oversteer side. I can both over, and under steer in my car (94 EX w/ rear teg swaybar) and in a turn if I give gas, car understeers, if I suddenly brake, or even let go of the throttle then the rear end starts to slide out. I would still go with the itr swaybar though.