Quote:
Originally Posted by Polo08816
+1.
And yet there are a bunch of clowns on here that will say, "I put H&R springs with my stock shocks and now my car rides like a dream and stays flat during cornering..."
When you hear that, you can attribute that to someone cheerleading purchases that they have already made.
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Hmmm. Reminds me of my old 98 Accord ExV6 I had as a kid...
I was thoroughly disgusted by the amount of dive/squat Honda engineered into the suspension system. All of my previous gen Accords had fairly tight control of dive/squat.
The new (at the time) 98 6th gen I bought literally nose dived like a large American sedan. I thought I would remedy this dive with a set of H&R OE Soft Sport Springs paired with the OEM shocks.
To my dismay, brake dive and acceleration squat were still ever present. I don't think the springs made a difference at all, in that regard. The front drop was .75 inch and the rear was lowered .50 inch.
Ride quality did remain very stock like. No bad habits at all. But still, the dive was sickening.
The only redeeming quality the H&R springs had in that application, was body roll was greatly diminished. Disappointed by the dive, I was elated to discover that brisk cornering produced very minimal amounts of body roll. The Accord stock, had reasonably good roll control. In fact I had no problem with the Accord in this regard. But the added roll resistance the car displayed with the springs was a night and day (not to mention unexpected) improvement.
I say this to say, springs alone can increase handling and cornering stability, as well as turn in ability. But again this was on my Accord, but I'd assume BMW applications to be similar.
Springs and shocks DO need to be matched... In my Accords case I think the spring rate was very similar to stock, but just offered a slight reduction in ride height. It all worked together very well.
More... I had a 99 Avenger ES V6 (Eclipse clone) that I fitted KYB AGX adjustable shocks to.
I kept the stock springs on this one. Adjusting the shocks firmer and firmer did produce better handling in the form of less dive/squat/roll/pitch/and better transient response. In fact, set near full firm (3 front / 6 or 7 rear) handling and ride was quite nice, again with no bad habits and awesome control. Set to full soft, the ride was stockfish.
In my experience, springs or shocks alone can increase handling. But then again, how much better would the handling have been if the springs AND shocks had been matched??
I can recall instances of people applying super low and stiff springs to OEM shocks and the dilapidated, uncontrolled, unrefined, and strut damaging ride quality it produced.
This was a common occurrence seen in my Car club where people only wanted to "drop" the car as cheaply as possible.
But in the case of a mild drop, with almost stock spring rates, it has been my experience that you can run stock shocks. Or just firmer shocks and have great results.
Do these Bimmers not respond similarly? I added Bilstein HD shocks to my stock E90 sport package springs and once again, handling improved markedly. In addition ride quality, in certain conditions, improved as well. But then again, this was another "mild" upgrade.