A little history...Six years ago I bought an Acura TL. A brief ride on some
of Ky's byways showed the car was a bit 'loose'.

I added the ( A-Spec ) Acura suspension and a honking big rear anti-sway bar.

The drop was no more the 0.5 inches. But the ride was much 'mo better'.

Fast forward: a couple of days ago I bought 2012 Fit Sport A/T. Today after
getting the windows tinted I took a scenic route home and had a couple
of 'I wish I had scrubbed off a bit more speed before entering this corner' moments.

The Acura of course has no such problems.

I realize that comparing the Fit to the Acura is sorta foolish...

But, can the handling of the Fit be improved to the point of having
confidence in the handling when *moderately* being pushed.

It appears that no one has anything bad to say about the Progress
anti-sway bar for the Fit so that might be a first step.

I am not really interested in any kind of a drop ( small ok ). I have
a steep driveway with a 'valley' type gutter.

I also don't want whiplash or my filiings rattled out on rough roads.

Is there a suspension solution ( at some definition of reasonable cost) that
offers a discernible improvement over the stock system.

Thanks for any insights...

Jerry

 

A slight amount of research would have netted you the best spring available for the fit. Swift springs. Perfect drop, slightly stiffer, designed with stock shocks in mind so you don't blow them. Lower will lower your center of gravity (fit is already 10ft in the air stock) and the stiffness will help with body roll. The rear sway will keep the rear from rolling so bad as well. Next improvement is 205/50/16's. 2012's stock tires are horrid, so upgrading these is an instant huge gain as well. So, for less than the price of a set of tires for your TL, you can get the fit handling real decent, and still be comfy for daily activity

Ps:: I work at an Acura dealership. Haha. That's how I know how much your tires are. Lol

 

Buy real tires.

 

install camber bolts for the front...get somewhere between -1 to -1.5degree camber

 

Yessir.

Don't do any suspension mods till you do this. It actually handles quite well out of the box if your not scared of the body roll.

 

eurobean gave a great answer and i may consider doing that myself

I can't comment on things like springs and whatnot so I won't. What I can comment on is suspension design. A TL has a much more sophisticated setup than the Fit, both front and rear; I would have to look up the exact setup but I suspect it's double wishbones in front and a well-sorted multilink in the rear. The Fit has struts in front and twist-beam in the back.

As a result in the Fit I find that things like body roll and turn radios are not in harmony; going into a turn you may think you have a perfect line only to find that the body loads or unloads unpredictably. The shifts are not major and not unsafe - I'm talking about reasonable cornering speeds here - and they may not even affect your line in a corner perceptibly but they DO have a noticable impact on your confidence that the car is going to do what you want.

But a sow's ear? No, I don't think you're stuck with it. For one thing Honda has already sorted this setup much better than the competition; even if you start with this relatively cheap setup there are thoughtful tuning choices you can make and Honda invested the time in doing this. Some of the competition uses a similar basic geometry but ends up with something both mushy in the turns and hoppy on the interstate. So already it's not terrible, and as stated there are some simple things you can do (tires being the first!) to improve things.

My two cents. Still learning on this topic

 

I decided to go with Swift springs and a Progress anti roll bar.

The handling has become much more silk purse than sows ear...

For some reason I don't seem to be able to pitch new tires ( less than 1000 miles )
for other new tires... Are the kumho 4x's that much better?

Jerry

 

I'll tell you one thing I loved about the stocker, is they are very responsive. The sidewalls must be pretty stiff. The go kart feeling lessened a whole bunch, but my tires are notoriously soft, and the benefit is that they are light. Look at how much the Khumos weigh before putting them on. A heavy tire is going to really mess up performance on such a small, under-powered, lightly sprung car.