Vanct, personally, I wouldn't go even a half inch lower. Your ride looks really unique for a Honda Fit whereas it relates to lowering.

The radius (curve) of your fenders almost identically match the radius of your rims. In other words, the amount of distance between the edge of your fenders and the edge of your rims is consistent almost all the way from the front of the tire to the rear.

Finely crafted auto designers (mainly exotics) almost always match the curve of fender to the tire/wheel. If there's space at all between the top of the tire and edge of the fender it's even all the way around the tire. Fits tend to have a huge gap at the front and back of the tire compared to the top of the tire which disappears into the wheel well. Fit fenders are not designed to be a near-perfect circle.

The amount you're lowered, plus your choice of 17" rims made the wheel and fender radius nearly a perfect match. You go any lower and it will ruin that even, almost-designed-for-each-other look.

Your ride looks borderline incredible, btw. That wheel choice makes your Fit one of the best-looking I've ever seen... unique! I wouldn't have thought that possible if I had seen those wheels by themselves, unmounted.

It's a "looker", man. Good eye... nice selections!

 

You have VIP style wheels.
You must go low, its that simple.

Your car doesn't look bad now, but there's just so much gap/tire.

 

Ok now your just rubbing it in.. Sell me those rims.. I still can't believe you found those in that size... I've been looking for a while.
I wanted to quote all your pics.. Beautiful photography!!! very deserving of a great build. Great job on the whole package!

mike find me a set of Vienna's like that.

 

IMO there are very few members here that could give you any good/decent input on coilovers. Most are going to have input on their own specific coilover they are using, or say "I had 'x brand' coilover on 'so and so car' and they are awesome", yadda yadda yadda. Only thing I would take from their reccomendations are possibly on build quality, ride quality would be irrelevant. How many people on here do you know that have had multiple coilover setups on their Fit?

 

TROOF. 10char.

 

Oh yeah, I forgot, Vanct... you must go low solely for the sake of going so low your heat shield and various items under the car drag the ground at even a hint of a one inch bump in the road!

It looks great with great wheel/tire/fender proportion now... but who cares! Go low just for the sake of going low. If you tear your ride up underneath at least it was as low as low can get while you could still drive it! And who cares about the expense accumulated when you tear the underside up!

Remember Raaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!? He totaled his Fit by being as low as the pavement would allow. But who cares... it was as low as low could get!



Sorry guys... I just don't get the whole thing of going low just to see how low you can get without dragging. Maybe that's style to some, and it definitely is in some instances depending on the particular ride. But if it already looks great, why screw with near-perfection by going lower just to, well, just go lower... all for the sake of going lower?

 

Thanks for observation and compliments, and I'd honestly be happy if my car remained at it's current state forever, but part of me never wants to stop lol. I really wasn't sure how the wheels would look on my car either but I'm glad I gave it a shot. I like to go to car shows and the one thing I'm really missing now is coilovers (for a simple build like this). I only want to go about 1-1.5 inches lower, enough to tuck some of the tire but not enough to destroy everything else. Still not sure if it's possible due to an unavoidable speed bump at my work, need to do more measuring.

Yep, another reason why I wasn't sure about getting these because not enough low (among other things) to pull it off lol. It's still in a transitional stage, I probably won't go VIP in the end though.

Thanks again man, and everything is always for sale at the right price lol.

Haha, you're right about that. That's the one thing about our platform that is both bad and good. While it's good that it's a more unique car for a build, it's bad that there are less "tuners" (using this term VERY lightly, that includes me ), so the knowledge base is so scattered when it comes to stuff like this. I guess I should look for what to avoid instead lol.

 

Dude the car looks great. The whole low debate is as simple as this: some people only think a car looks good lowered, others think cars can be beautiful at stock height (some cars that is, the Fit maybe not so much). It's all PERSONAL TASTE people so how can you possibly argue over it??

As far as going lower w/ coils, your idea of 1-1.5 inches lower is great. I'm tucking tire ever so slightly right now with the stock 16s and 205/50 and I don't have any problems. Fenders are rolled so no rubbing and I get over every speed bump and driveway/entrance I attempt. You can do it!!!

 

Yup, all personal taste for sure, and for me it's definitely more towards slammed cars lol. But I like a balance too since this is my daily driver.

Here's a quick edit of the lowest I'd want to go for daily driving (and maybe lower for some shows).



At that height, I'll probably have maybe 2 inches of clearance in front at the lowest point, so I won't be able to make it over some speedbumps without wooden boards. This also leaves me enough leeway to still be able to carry passengers. I want a set that allows me to go this low with the collars still in so I can raise it up for long drives.

 

I know Buddy Club N+ would allow you to look just like that with the collars still in. I have 16s and with mine all the way down w/ both collars still in the rear it looks close to that, and adjusting for your 17s I'd say they'd be perfect. But of course I can only give you my review of those specific coils.

 

I like lower cars but in New York the roads are terrible. At that height I would rip the front lip off just pulling into driveways. That is the reason I can not lower my Miata any more I even scrap going out some gas stations forget speed bumps..

 

You want to see slam

 

Man THAT looks like fun...

 

That p/s looks excellent.

Easily driveable at that height too.

 

The p/s looks to be about where I used to sit on my BuddyClub's:


I sit a little lower up front now, but I ran maxed out with no perch at all in the rears for about a week or so:


At that height there wasn't a single speedbump I bottomed out on, I bottomed out on some streets, and I almost got stuck on a few higher speedbumps / driveways. Looked fantastic, but I couldn't handle DD'ing it that low. Not to mention that the rear springs didn't seat properly without the perch and I couldn't have anyone in the back seats.

 

Thanks for the references, that's about as low as I'd want it in the second pic. Were you able to lower the front that low with collars still in? I'd leave the perches in the rear for the reasons you mentioned, as long as there is no gap at all like in the first pic. I don't mind a slight rake to it, as long as the front looks a little tucked. Did you camber the front at all, and how? Also, what tire size is pictured?

I noticed they sell some kits with a different urethane mount, instead of reusing the OEM. How necessary would it be to get these, and are they critical for camber adjustment?

"Upper Mount Notes: The Buddy Club upper urethane mounts have several advantages over your standard OEM mounts. First, they will tighten up your ride and give you quicker steering response. Second, on Imports with McPherson struts, they allow for camber adjustment."

 

The N+ has camber adjustment on the front. You can probably get -3 or 4 deg out of it. And for the rears you can take both collars out and still use the perch and the spring should be fine.

 

Nice, that's all the camber I'll probably ever need lol. Thanks for the tip on the rear collars, I might just take those out then as long as there is no chance the spring will pop out. I'll probably only need to keep the collars in the front so I can raise it up about an inch for traveling.

 

Front collars probly won't be a problem. You can lower them a ton before they hit the collars. And yeah in the rear you'd still have the perch to hold the spring in, just wouldn't have the two locking collars on it. I think FittedOnEm had taken the whole perch out altogether to go lower and that's why his springs were slippin.

 

I ziptied my rear springs down when I removed the perches. I used 4 zips and only zipped the last bottom coil. The rear coil never spins so it works out well. The ride quality does go down. But it never really bothered me much.