I dont mean preloaded as if the springs are under pressure. I mean preloaded like a preloaded caliper meaning everything is included and put together and all you have to do is put it on the car.

 

I wasn't referring to handling. I was thinking about driving in a straight line and hitting speed bumps or large dips in the road, ride comfort. Having the rear sway bar seamed to have an effect of loading the chassis when hitting road flaws while using the S2-Pro Cs. Nothing is worse than the roads in Brooklyn....period! Tons of secondary roads can only be traveled about 15-25 mph because of their conditions. Grow a pair of what???

 

Maybe its just me but isnt the sway bar links supposed to be more of a vertical position. Im not saying thats causing your problem Im just saying the links just dont look right. All my cars the links have always been almost vertical.

 

grow a pair of testicles

 

How many places you been to? I've seen a lot of roads but I wouldn't claim any of them are worse than any other road anywhere, ever. That's just dumb. I'm sure your roads are bad enough, period!

 

I am missing the whole point here. Why are you changing the suspension Marco? You do not want to lower the car, your roads are so bad I doubt if you need the suspension for handling. So to me it looks like you are spending a ton of money and have ended up with a poor riding car which looks weird with the rake.

It seems like the installer has screwed up something or you have bought some aftermarket stuff that just don't FIT. I would package it all up and go back to stock and maybe buy a few LEDS instead.

bill

 

I made that claim because I travel for a living. When you have to call 911 so the police can come and get your car out of a hole in the road (I'm exaggerating to get my point across), that's pretty bad.

 

I was hoping that wasn't what you meant. I wish you could really add something of value to a thread. So Matt, you've been on here forever, but it seams like you never post pics or anything serious of value. Do you have a Fit? I know some people are on here but don't. If you don't, no big deal.

 

Bill, the point of altering the suspension was to improve the handling of the vehicle in an ideal setting. My desire to keep the height standard was a concession to the realities of urban road conditions. Obviously, my current situation accomplishes niether. Ultimately I may have to return to stock, but I believe I still have a ways to go before conceeding defeat. Thank you for your input, and LEDs are nice, too.

 

installation/adjustment issues aside, i agree with r: skunk2's are way too stiff. i would NEVER daily with them. i wouldnt doub that most people who use them have never been in a car that has a good ride handling balance.

the proc's are the track oriented suspension. the pro s is for the street and they dont make them for our cars.

 

I dd my pro-c's without any ride quality issues or complaints. Been in many good ride/handling both stock and modded cars in my lifetime and don't find the pro-c's to be super stiff like some of you saying.
I guess it all depends on personnel taste and the roads you drive on. What feels stiff to you may not be stiff for others.


.

 

The answer to your problem can be found in two words, my friend:

AIR RUNNER

 

yes matt (solbrothers) has a Fit, which i am quite a fan of as a matter of fact it is one of my 3 favorite ssm Fits, and yes just grow a pair but seriously why did you get skunk2's you don't want to be low, you don't NEED improved handling if your roads are bad, and the ride is bad.....sounds like you just opened pandora's box by not knowing what you want/need

 

https://www.fitfreak.net/forums/fit-...but-close.html most recent photoshoot. still almost a year old i think. i should do another shoot

 

Shaft travel of the shock on coilovers like these is independent of how much preload is put on the spring, so bottoming out the shocks isn't the problem. And unless the springs are overcompressed so far that the coils are actually binding, I don't think you'll see a huge improvement by removing preload on them - they're linear rate springs.

I'm not sure what to make of this. I hate to ask, but you're sure your rear end wasn't artificially jacked up because of the e-brake?

The new end-links - longer or shorter than the stock ones? And how about the mount location on the new shock? Lower or higher than stock? Looking at the pictures, I'm going to assume the net result is a longer end-link.

So given this info, here's my opinion: The end links supplied by Skunk2 are (I'm guessing) designed to improve function with the stock sway bar, which is not as stiff as the T1R piece. The combination of introducing more preload onto a stiffer bar effectively increases your wheel rates by quite a bit (since our sway bar doesn't act in a linear fashion).

Maybe Skunk2 designed the longer endlinks precisely for this reason - to increase sway bar tension. Although with their spring rates as high as they are, I'm not sure why they would need to. Conventional wisdom is that the more spring you're running, the less bar you should need. :shrug:


For what it's worth, my Fit is now lowered 1.25" in the front and 1" in the rear - I spent Sunday driving down to the city. In, around, and out of Manhattan with zero problems. The roads are, indeed, not great - but honestly no worse than any other big city I've driven in. Boston has the worst roads, Chicago is the runner up. NYC is a very close 3rd, but it depends on the part. Other places like Montreal, Toronto, DC, Philly, St. Louis, etc. don't compare. But an inch drop is very much doable in the city, and the Endura-tech's I'm running are quite a bit softer than your setup.

Prior the Fit I drove a '97 Prelude - it was lowered 1.5" for more than 7 years. Over 140,000 miles, I've driven that car through the worst roads imagineable (some paved, some dirt, others an aborted attempt at one or the other) - I can honestly say that I scraped less and bottomed out the suspension less often after I lowered it than while stock.

So yeah, to reiterate my current theory - too much sway bar preload. Get some shorter end-links. Either that or try things with the stock front bar reinstalled . . .

Best of luck . . .


Air suspensions + tire life? not so much.

 

Just picked up the Fit from the installer, but only had the chance to drive it the 1/2 mile home in a torrential downpour. Even in the short trip I noticed a tremendous improvement. The Shop was closed by the time I got there so I only have the few details one of the mechanics left me. On the front they lowered the spring perches, raised the lower mount and adjusted the end links and sway bar. Tomorrow I'll have it aligned and get some pics of the changes. Oh, and they lowered the rear. I'll post more details tomorrow night. Thanks again to all.

 

Nice looking ride Matt. I had my car around that stance before. Looks great but when I have to cross the city or go to a show in the city it slammed into the bump stops all the time and you could take the front end off of the car if you weren't careful. The road conditions vary by up to 4-8 inches above or below ground all over the place. Could be a speed bump placed in the middle of a parkway/highway or a large indented surface six feet long. There is no substitution for a full length coil spring.

My daily driving is a Subaru Outback which is actually raised in stock form. Sometimes the roads are too rough even for that car.

 

stiff is stiff no matter what...what affects it is what you have driven. your other car is an evo...not exactly known for its supple ride...so basically your opinion on the matter is going to differ greatly on the subject.

the rs4 and m3's handle just about as good as evos...and they are more comfy to boot. there is a way to make a car handle great and ride softly...the japanese are still figuring it out, though since they dont have speedlimit-less freeways and instead have congested streets or hardcore tracks, this is understandable.

 

OK, here's the low down.
The spring perches were lowered as were the lower mounts. You can clearly see a lot more threads now in the pic. I had mistakenly stated in an earlier post that they had been raised. The end links were adjusted to relieve some of the tension on the sway bar which greatly improved the clearance with the lower control arm. (BTW, to answer someone's question: the Skunk2 links were shorter that the OEM, but could have been even shorter still). The rear of the car was lowered as well though it’s still a finger higher than the front. The ride improvement was so great that I actually ended up adjusting the stiffness up to three clicks. Needless to say, I am thrilled with the way it handles and how it all turned out. The shop was great and may have been even happier than me that it came out right.
One thing about the alignment, which was sorely needed to adjust the toe, that J's lower lip spoiler would not clear any ramp-style alignment shops; of which 95% are, including the dealer's. Fortunately, there is a place near my work which does trucks and RVs and they had the kind you drive straight onto and over a pit.
Thanks to everyone for their input, it is greatly appreciated.

 

Glad to hear you've gotten things sorted out - definitely get that alignment asap . . . even without much (or any) drop, it doesn't take much to really throw toe out of whack. And it'll let you know how bad your rear end is as well so you can plan on shims if necessary.

How did they go about adjusting the end-links? Without replacing them with ones of a different length, there's not really anything to adjust. Unless maybe they just reset the bar in it's bushings or something.