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The one unforgiveable sin, over lowering your car, by the real experts!

RAAMaudio

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#1
"The one unforgiveable sin, over lowering your car", by the real experts!

I have spoken up many times here about lowering a car too much, something I used to do decades ago. Unfortunately some enthusiasts just do not realize how little you can drop a car and not screw it all up, take a took and at the rest of the articles on this great site, MotoIQ.

http://www.motoiq.com/MagazineArticles/ID/1712/The-Ultimate-Handling-Guide-Part-V-The-One-Unforgivable-Sin-Overlowering-Your-Car.aspx

Enjoy:)
Rick
 


Kip2MyLou

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#2
Great read. I'm just to purchase some springs and decided on cobb/eibachs. Can't go much lower than that because of these stupid city streets. I just don't trust them.
 


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RAAMaudio

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Thread Starter #3
For those that do know better and still do this, to each their own of course.

I do not get it, why by such an amazing handling car and make it worse is beyond me.

It is like modding a car to fit a style which to me is not being very individualistic, just following another group albeit a smaller group it is still a group and most of these things are first started as a show car idea or even a cartoon then become a fad well used for marketing parts to make your car worse and take your money, not in your best interest.

Again, those that choose such paths, go for it, I just like to help ensure the truth be known as many new into cars can be easily led astray.

We have the best modern hatch pocket rocket ever offered, I chose to make mine even better, most here do, sure glad of that:)

Good day!

Rick
 


Etyrnus

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#4
I'm on stock ride height and suspension, and I still scrape around where I live. No lowering for me. If anything, I'd probably look at one of the rally suspension setups.
 


Hijinx

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#5
Our control arms appear pretty flat already. It's why I haven't and don't plan to lower my car. The 215s clean up the wheel gap well enough for me.
 


Hijinx

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#7
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the ST lower than a regular Fiesta?
 


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RAAMaudio

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Thread Starter #9
I looked at making my own roll center and bump steer setup, they go hand in hand, but just lowered a little is all I can go for the street and it is working incredibly well on the track so I do not want to go lower, just leave it the same all the time. I was going to use this car in the winter but now have gone to far with it, I would of raised it up for that use.

On our cars there might be something close enough to press out the ball joints and press in new longer ones as long as the shaft taper is correct or ream out the knuckles, etc, this can be done in a couple of ways, tapered, straight, etc.

Bump steer, it is possible there is a bolt on solution as long as the tie rod ends are long enough, tie rod thread is correct and they fit into the knuckles, with our without reaming, etc....

Since my car is a street and track car and I want to keep it as simple as possible I prefer to not have to change the ride height as that requires considerable alignment work on some cars, usually just toe adjustment or I would of figured this out by now and either listed the parts needed and or sent the info to one of our vendors if they were interested in offering kits.

Also just being a bit lowered and having a splitter and undertray that comes fairly close to hitting the curbs on the track which I love to jump as well as having fun getting into parking lots is more reason to not go lower.

Note:
It is a rough estimate of properly geometry to look at the angle of the control arms, we have to look at the center of the ball joints an inner pick up points to be accurate, on some cars the control arms can be quite deceiving.
Bump steer, ensure the tie rod inboard center of the shaft and ball joint center are parallel with the control arm pivot points.
 


Hijinx

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#10
You are not wrong.
This is the point at which even I would want to see some literature. I've looked and I think all Ford ever gave us was "sport-tuned" suspension.

Is there anything that lists full changes? Otherwise, I'd be left to assume they swapped out shocks, springs, and sway bar then called it a day. Which would mean the ST was lowered to an effective height. BUT, as long as it's not too low and your spring rates are high enough, everything should be a-ok.

I found something: http://www.autotrends.org/tag/sport-tuned-suspension/
 


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RAAMaudio

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Thread Starter #11
Just posted and realize some is a bit redundant, I will clean it up in a bit.

------------------


One thing Ford did was dial in some fun with the rear alignment, it works great up to a very high point but would induce high speed issues on a track and overall issues on a car setup to be far faster than stock on super sticky and wider tires like I run.

If you look at a typical FWD street alignment, not much front camber, quite a bit of rear, to induce understeer, it is far safer for the vast majority of drivers

FiST, more front camber, little rear, to make the car tail happy which is great fun and part of the love for this car!

Sorry I do not recall the exact numbers and those are not all they did, some of which may not be published.
Stiffer rear axle instead of adding a sway bar
Mild front bar
Possibly king pin angle which effects several things
Roll center
Bump steer
Ride height
Shock valving
Spring rates
And more

This was a pretty serious effort taking a lot of engineering and testing to get this car sorted so well for the intended purpose.
----------

As for me changing the rear alignment.

It was a great deal of effort to change it, difficult to tune it...So I researched what other similar car settings are stock and race modified and ended up setting it up very close to the a very fast SM class turbo Matrix I had built in 2002 and it is working incredibly well. -1.9 camber and 0.0 toe. My goal was -2.0 but -1.9 is enough and it allowed fitting 9" wide rear wheels under the rear fenders with some serious pulling and rolling effort to not move them much but enough.

-1.5 or so may of been enough but I wanted to ensure plenty of rear grip to induce high speed corner understeer, just a bit, which I can tune in several ways.
5-way rear bar if I run it, testing will show if needed
Bigger front bar
Spring rate
Ride height to a degree
Damper adjustment
Air pressure in tires.
Front toe, camber and castor
Wheel offset, effects scrub radius and more
Scales to corner balance
Bump steer, yet to be tested, it has little or none at the moment.

Later if a very good moderate cost 2-way coilover kit comes out I will give it a try as well, for now the BC race spec ones are quite good.

I am in the process of moving the camber adjustment to the strut knuckle from the top of the struts now as it is a better place to do it, I have to run wheel spacers to clear the coil overs so will have custom ones made once dialed in.

Since most of what I do will be impossible to provide data usable for others setups I am just offering what I am doing as an overall idea of what I am doing and why and then professional level links so you can see why I do such things and what you can learn about your setup for your needs.

Have a great day:)
Rick
 


Perfblue15

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#12
Screwed up geometry or not I'll keep my H&R springs. Personally I'm not trying to set lap records on the nurburgring. So the drastic appearance/attitude change is more then worth the small amount of handling sacrifice that I will personally probably never notice.
 


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RAAMaudio

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Thread Starter #13
They might fall into realm of a properly engineer ride height reduction spring setup as H&R is not one of the ricer companies or at least never used to be for a very long time.

If your ball joint centers are slightly below the inner pickup point centers you are in a great place:)
 


Etyrnus

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#14
I know on the top gear episode with the FiST Hammond was talking about it was 15mm lower than the regular fiesta.
 


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RAAMaudio

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Thread Starter #15
There are many things that could of been changed between the none and ST modles and I am sure there were besides just ride height based on the springs that it makes it impossible to really compare other than just being lowered, unless we know all the other changes, or not, they did in the setup of the chassis we cannot use ride height as a validation of the overall end results.

As mention the rear axle is not the same, different alignment and if not mentioned different stiffness(resistance to twist, it is a sway bar of sorts as well as an axle)

Team O'Neil uses the no ST in their ST rally builds;)

---------------

Unfortunately the vast majority of aftermarket parts manufactures do little real engineering, they really cannot afford to even it they know how.

That is why we need to stick to the solid fundamentals vice advertising hype, etc....many companies that have a good race rep will still sell parts to meet the consumer demand, which is often based to much on style, fad, trend...far more than the physics involved.

There are some great aftermarket manf, not saying FiST specific, that engineer their products far more than the norm.

A simple rule of thumb I like to use is if it makes your car heavier but not faster, it is not a performance mod.

I could be a safety mod, good, it could be an entertainment mod you are willing to live with, good, it could be a style mod you just have to have, good, all is good as long as you know what the true end results are going to be and you are OK with it as long as not going to far in the extreme and seriously affecting the safety, reliability, etc...

We do have to give leeway to cooling parts for a higher powered car, bigger brakes if needed(not for most cars)

My posts and threads are almost always about pure performance over anything else and that may not matter to some which is cool with me:)

In fact I have the parts here for a high end audio install, very low weight and modular to take it out for track events but plan to run it on the street.

I may end running track events with it installed if it helps balance the car and makes my lap times faster.

Been a long day, I might edit this in the AM:)

Rick
 


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