Cutting springs?

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chris96camaro
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Foreign and Domestic
Is it a good idea to cut the springs on a car? I want to lower mine and if i can lower it by cutting the springs and not hurting anything than i will do that...Just want to know if cutting the stock sprins hurts anything. If it matters, its a '96 camaro, same as in sig..

 
Springs are progressive , meaning not each coil is designed to take the same amount of weight more or less. DONT ****in cut your springs unless you want a shitty pogo riding camaro , pay the money for lowering springs

 
my friend cut the springs on his ranger, rides like crap now........i've also heard of heating the springs and letting the weight of the car lower it.........never done it though.
we did that to a kids car once in auto shop , car didnt sit very level afterwards //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/crazy.gif.c13912c32de98515d3142759a824dae7.gif

 
By heating the springs you are effectively changing the properties of the metal and making it weaker. And by chopping the springs you are basically screwing up the whole design of the springs. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

If anything, i'd look for dropped spindles first, but i doubt they have em for camaros. I never liked dropped springs, but thats my opinion.

 
It is acceptable to cut springs, but remove no more than 1 inch from the overall length of the coil.

The rate for a coil spring is determined by the spring’s inside diameter (id), the number of active coils, and the wire diameter. To increase spring rate, use larger-diameter wire, a larger id, or fewer coils. but as soon as you cut a spring, the spring rate increases. This is due to a rule of coil-spring design that uses the number of coils and the wire diameter to determine the spring rate.

Also...The factory provides 2 rubber flanged cups that fit into both ends of the coil springs. These are sized to fit the tapered ends of the coil (once you take one off, you'll see). After you cut any length off the coil, the cups won't fit anymore. Therefore to avoid metal-to-metal contact, you can use two pieces of rubber gasket material to fit up into the upper hat for the coils to compress into. Make sense?

 
Is it a good idea to cut the springs on a car? I want to lower mine and if i can lower it by cutting the springs and not hurting anything than i will do that...Just want to know if cutting the stock sprins hurts anything. If it matters, its a '96 camaro, same as in sig..
Good god no, get a set of lowering springs.

And replace the shocks at the same time - or don't do it. Fact of the matter is you likely won't get the front assembly apart without breaking the shocks in some way anyway - it just happens.

 
fyi....

when I purchased my car about 18 months ago, the springs were cut and the car was very low... I thought it looked great...

then I found out that one of my springs snapped and the springs were welded onto the struts... (~750 for lowering springs and new struts)... Immediately after I fixed this I had a couple of bad ball joints, go bad...

all in all I spent approx 12-1500 fixing suspension problems from cutting the springs....

so I say go for it....

 
thats ghetto as hell
a good lowering spring kit is only 150-220 bucks. camber kits a bit more

on some cars you dont need camber kits... all 4 of my tires have adjust cambers, stock... its not too common though

 
Explain to me why i'm an idiot. I ran the car down I85 at about 90 for a couple miles and had no pulling problems or anything. I figure if i can get by for the $12 i spent on the spring compressor i saved myslef about $200, and if its a problem, ill upgrade...

 
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chris96camaro

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