I would very rarely take the car to the track(maybe once per year), and wanted to lower the car by about 1.5" to 2.0". How does this affect peformance, especially in the 1/4, and what advantages are there to doing this? I know it can scrape with my LT's, but would look SO much better. I tried a search, but no dice.

 

from my expirence and what people say:

Lowering it will hurt you car's wieght transfer of the launch. This will have direct effect on your 1/4 time.

helping to correct it. Get softer springs in rear, and drag shocks. Get Relocation brackets also for your control arms, and a adj. torque arm won't hurt either.

Advantages...looks Way better, supposedly lowers center of gravity helping handeling. But have mixed info stating suspension geometry will be thrown off.

My expirence, depends what kinda launches you want to pull, 1.6's...gonna be pritty hard. 1.8's probably OK. After 1st gears wieght transfer you should be pritty good. Looks are probably worth it if your not hard core all the time drag racer. The shocks and relocation are probably best improvements.

Good luck
Any other opinions....?

 

It improves handling if u go with good lowering kit. It lowers the center of gravity, which im sure is good for performance.........................

 

I like the eibach pro-kit for performace, but I like the stance of the Sportline kit a little better. You seem like you want to go Sportline.

Center of gravity is important, but so is wieght transfer. I have a car that's lowered 2.5" on crapy coilovers, car handels good on a exit ramp but sudden left and right turns its crapy and the tire spins under throttle...no weight transfer. But they are crapy springs, so don't buy the cheapest spring....Center of gravity is an important factor still.

 

As soon as I read this I knew that you had aftermarket LCA's with poly bushings. So I looked at your site and confirmed it. That's the reason why it handles poorly in sudden left/right transitions. You might not be able to tell, but it also handles poorly in steady state corners too. Your LCA's are causing severe suspension bind and they are literally lifting your inside tire off of the road in hard corners causing the tire spin ... and they will also cause sudden snap spin. Your LCA's have to twist to allow normal suspension movement. Factory rubber bushing deflect enough to allow this twist, and solid endlinks are ideal at letting the suspension work. Poly/poly LCA's are good for drag racing only They are dangerous for anything else.

 

sounds like you know what your talking about, but it accually isn't on my camaro, and it doesn't have poly bushings on the car I'm talking about. To me..it just would make since. The wieght of the car plants the tires. And with a car that has no time to transfer wieght I can't see how you can apply a great amount of pressure w/o slipping/spining. Same w/ launching. You have a lot of good info, I would like to know why company's such as G2 and others that are big into autocross use poly bushings though? Not flaming what so ever just a discusion. My guess would be that the suspension should do the movement not the bushings...if I understand you correctly?

thanks for checking out the site,
even though its a little out dated.

 

Ok, so I should replace the poly/poly in my Spohn LCA's with rubber since my car is being set up for handling. Do I have to replace all the bushings in the LCA's or just the ones on the body or rear?

 

Well, here's my experience...

The first time I went to the track, my car was stock suspended, shocks and all. I cut consistent 2.3-2.4 60' times all day long on street rubber. Track prep was a joke.

One year later, same car, only this time lowered on a Ground Control setup. I lowered my car 1.5" all around, 400 lb/in linear springs up front, 125 lb/in linear springs in the rear. Shocks were revalved Bilsteins up front with 3rd Gen Bilstein HDs in the rear. SLP subframes were installed as well. Most decidedly not a drag strip setup. In addition to this, I was running poly/poly LCAs and panhard rod (both Spohn pieces). I also had bolt-on relocation brackets. This time around, I was cutting consistent 2.1 60's on the same tires, still on street tire pressure. This is what most people were cutting on drag radials there. Track prep was the same (none).

Moral of the story: to an extent, even a setup made for handling will help you cut better short times at the track.

Now, that being said, I'm going to be trying some G2 poly/rod LCAs to see if I can live with the noise. If I can't, I will daily drive my car on the Spohn poly/poly LCAs. The Spohn panhard rod is also being replaced in favor of a BADZ panhard rod outfitted with QA1 rod ends. The torque arm will also be replaced with the G2 piece. I'll let you know how it all turns out.

 

Lowering the car helps, did mine. Went From mid 1.40's 60ft's To Low 1.30's with some fine tuning and the car's slicks tucked up inside the rear ...

 

To some extent, it's as simple as supply and demand. If customers want poly/poly, companies will make it and sell it. Call up any reputable company and ask what is absolutely best for handling, and you're going to get rod/rod as an answer. Ask them about poly bind directly, and you will probably get the honest answer as well.

poly/poly will feel better to most people because it improves overall response and reduces roll. This is only an impressions of better handling. The real problems don't become more obvious till you really try pushing the car, and the majority of people out there just don't really push their cars from a handling perspective, so poly/poly is never an issue to them. The feel is better, and that's all that matters.

The only time you WANT weight transfer is when accelerating. You don't want it while cornering. You don't want it while braking. You're going to get weight transfer whenever you do any of these things, there's just no way around that. The goal with cornering and braking though is to minimize it. So, you can see the conflict between drag racing and other aspects of automotive performance. A dedicated drag car is going to maximize the cars ability to transfer weight to the drive wheels. This is going to hamper cornering and braking.

Lowering cG in general, will decrease weight transfer. That's not to say that it will always hurt the cars launch in doing so though. There are other factors involved in the cars ability to launch. Suspension geometry is very important. The cars ability to "hook" is more in the suspension than anything else, as you've gotta hook before you get the weight transfer.

 

Here's a little more in depth answer to some of the questions. If you have Poly on one end of the LCA, you MUST have a rod end on the other to allow the suspension to do what it HAS TO DO to perform well in a corner. It doesn't matter which one is on what end, as long as the LCA can twist.

Picture this if you will. Looking as the *** end of your car picture the drivers side wheel shoved up into the wheel well 2 inches, at the same time picture the passenger side wheel pulled away from the wheel well by the same 2 inches. This is what happens when you corner hard. Now the rear end is at perhaps a 10 degree angle compared to the body right ? So the LCA brackets welded to the rear end are also at this very same 10 degree angle right ? Well the LCA brackets that hold the OTHER end of the LCA's are welded to the body right ? How can an LCA that doesn't twist be bolted to both the rear end AND the body when the angles of the brackets they bolt to are 10 degree's differant ?? They can't ! That's how. Poly/Poly bushing LCA's simply don't allow the suspension to move this way, and it NEEDS to . If you're going into a corner and your already up against this suspension bind and at this moment you hit a dip in the road or a pothole or bump, how do you think your car is going to react ? It's going to snap spin on you, or at the very least lift the inside tire off the road and spin causing a slide. Believe me you don't have to be at a racetrack at racing speeds for this to happen. Poly/Poly LCA's are either sold to people who drag race their cars only, or to people who don't understand what they're doing IMO. The problem is that vendors generally don't really care WHY you buy their LCA's, most just want to sell you something. The other problem is that everybody knows that Poly bushings are good for handling and so they see "Poly" next to a suspension part and assume it's desireable. Most of the time it is, just NOT with LCA's.