Lowering springs on standard shock absorbers?

Technical Area Steering & Suspension
1

Hi all,

I’m contemplating fitting a set of lowering springs to my MK3, something like this that will lower it by 35mm, or these that will lower it by 30mm…

Question is, can this be done with the standard shock absorbers or am I going to run into problems?

Also, what’s the lowest I can drop it by without running into issues such as scraping the underside (I’m mostly concerned about the rear section of the exhaust where it connects to the backbox, seems to be the lowest point), and similarly rubbing wheels etc.

Any thoughts?

Thanks :slight_smile:

2

When I tried it on my 2.5 the car hit the bump stops. The original absorbers are not able to slow down
movement at the bottom of their limited travel to adequately stop the bump.

3

Personally 30mm is enough, you’ll get over most stuff ok with that drop.
The Eibach ones get mentioned quite a lot on forums, not sure on the others.

4

How low did you go marpar ? Was everything else standard?

5

30mm at that time. Road humps and one track country roads were a pain, yes you could tear around roundabouts etc. I fitted cheap and nasty adjustables, went for 25mm and find driving much more pleasurable.

6

I’ve had Eibach on a couple of past Mk1’s on standard shocks and always been happy. Kept to 30mm and always happy with them. Probably now going to do the same on my Mk2 and go with Eibach again.

7

30mm should be fine i tried changing the stops on my first 5 made zero different my second 5 didn’t change them and was fine never hit the stops.

8

on my 2.5 eibach springs on the standard shocks gave me the magical 30mm drop and its been fine for many years,

9

The issue you frequently have doing such things is that lowering springs should be stiffer to that they can deal with the same loads over a shorter distance. So if you lower the car 30mm you have 30mm less travel before the bump stops. With standard dampers this can lead to the dampers being overloaded, meaning they are trying to deal with controlling the loads of the car over a shorter distance and this has been known to make the ride feel wallowy and under damped, because it is. Conversely if you have the Bilstein set up which is frequently described as fidgety on normal springs, it can feel much better on lowering springs.

10

I recently fitted a Bilstein B12 kit on my NC which incledes the Eibach lowering springs.

Handles great, but is a smidgen too low for me. Touched a couple of road humps, and also have hurdles to cross on my drive way.

Now thinking about some spacers to lift it a tad, or taking out the B12 kit and going to something height adjustable. Real shame as I do love the Billies, got a set on my BMW which transformed that car.

If anyone wants to make me an offer on the B12 kit…? Cost me just under £600, plus new bumpstops and front boots made them near £700.

11

Nick D is saying that which I said but more eloquently. I still have the set of -30mm springs from my 2.5, £10 plus postage to anyone interested.

12

Sounds like getting a set of coilvers and doing it properly is the way to go in that case then… Definitely want it a bit lower but not at the cost of ruining the driving characteristics.

Is there such thing as a set of coilvers that are preset and can just be bolted on with a 30mm drop or am I going to be looking at adjustables?

I’m just trying to find the most cost effective way of dropping it without hitting the underside/rubbing and without affecting the handling.