[greg0ry]

Originally Posted by Boost Creep

lol
Just messin' with you.

[Thill444]

Originally Posted by greg0ry

GUESS I AIN'T LOWERIN THE CAR FELLAS. But a little loss in gap would be nice. All good

There are lots of people who are lowered it and are happy. Especially if you don’t track it. If you do the work yourself it’s very little cost.

[Xaxas]

Originally Posted by greg0ry

GUESS I AIN'T LOWERIN THE CAR FELLAS. But a little loss in gap would be nice. All good

As others have said, if you want to lower for looks then go ahead, just be aware that it's objectively worse performing than stock even if the springs are good on their own.

[bubs]

non-Just put Eibach Pro-Kit spring on my Zl1 (non-1LE). Ride is good and I like the less gap. Not great visual reference attached for the drop.

[Nummeister]

Originally Posted by greg0ry

GUESS I AIN'T LOWERIN THE CAR FELLAS. But a little loss in gap would be nice. All good

Good choice! Never Lower with just springs and that’s with any car. It’s going to put stress on your current shocks in the long run and cause your shocks to wear out quicker. Oem shocks is not design for lowering springs. It’s going to do more harm than good. Good luck.

[Msquared]

Originally Posted by Nummeister

Good choice! Never Lower with just springs and that’s with any car. It’s going to put stress on your current shocks in the long run and cause your shocks to wear out quicker.

How? Assuming that the bump stops are not changed, the limits of travel in compression and rebound remain the same. It's not possible for a change in static ride height to cause accelerated wear to any shocks.

[NeverDie]

Right but this entire thread is full of regurgitated bullshit that people thought was gospel on early 2000's Honda Civic message boards, so grab a GIANT grain of salt.

[JamesNoBrakes]

Originally Posted by Msquared

How? Assuming that the bump stops are not changed, the limits of travel in compression and rebound remain the same. It's not possible for a change in static ride height to cause accelerated wear to any shocks.

It basically ends up with "not enough compression and rebound damping" for the wheel travel, that means that the shock is relying more on end-stroke and building to higher pressures more often, also in rebound going faster and relying more on internal top-out circuits and bumpers. Those things do accelerate wear to the internals, but at the same time, that's probably not your biggest issue or worry, unless you start pushing the car harder when driving.

The thing is the stuff you can't plan for, like going over a pot-hole, bump, depression, etc. Now the compression force will be stronger than the shocks can handle to adequately slow the shaft speed and the rebound force will be faster than the rebound damping can handle. Besides the loss of control issues, this also significantly affects wear and can damage things like wheels, tires, etc.

Bump stops or no, if you reduce the travel, you have to increase the spring rate, if you increase the spring rate, you need stiffer damping rates to adequately handle that increased spring rate. Not a big issue with adjustable shock dampers, like many coil-overs, but with most OEM setups, it is.

Again, it's not the end of the world, the car will drive fine most of the time and for most situations, but there are a significant number of people that seem to misunderstand the basic aspects of chassis suspension and damping.

[Alpha1BC]

Originally Posted by Msquared

How? Assuming that the bump stops are not changed, the limits of travel in compression and rebound remain the same. It's not possible for a change in static ride height to cause accelerated wear to any shocks.

You're absolutely right that changing static height alone won't hurt the dampers. *Potential* issues can come with the associated rate change though. I say potential because it takes a pretty drastic change in rate to be detrimental to damper life and also a pretty severe use case. From data I've seen most lowering spring kits shouldn't really change anything to impact damper life because rates are generally close enough and worst case scenarios (high lateral loads and/or high displacement+velocity suspension inputs) aren't really impacted, but it's still possible to do so with a poorly designed spring. You'll likely have different issues to deal with before damper life is a concern on a spring that is bad enough to hurt damper life, but it's not entirely accurate to say that lowered springs can *never* impact damper life if that makes sense. MR is probably slightly better than passive dampers at adjusting to this since it changes damper force based on velocity and in most driving scenarios the slight increase in damper force isn't going to be enough to have a noticeable impact on damper life.

Originally Posted by NeverDie

Right but this entire thread is full of regurgitated bulls*** that people thought was gospel on early 2000's Honda Civic message boards, so grab a GIANT grain of salt.

I wouldn't say it's complete bulls***, but I would agree to say impacts seem to be a bit exaggerated. Is it silly to assume that only throwing lowering springs on one of these cars (specifically OP's SS 1LE) without any other changes would be a performance improvement? Yeah, and an experienced driver would probably see worse lap times. That doesn't mean it will completely break the car, though. If someone wants to lower for cosmetic reasons and doesn't care about trying to set the fastest lap times out there, by all means go for it. They can have fun on the track and be quick. It's a balancing game at that point between looks and capability where the end goal for the car determines the "right" answer. If someone is chasing fast lap times and wants every ounce of capability they can get, no lowering springs alone really aren't the right answer. If someone wants to make the car lower and doesn't mind a slight (maybe even non-noticeable depending on driver skill) hit to at-the-limit performance, then there's not necessarily anything wrong with installing some lowering springs either.

[TrackClub]

Completely agree with the last 2 posts.
That's why top shelf shops sell coilover solutions.
Either static, or adjustable. Regarding the latter, one should be already a top shelf driver to take advantage of the adjustability (vs messing things up, which is easy to do). But, assuming one can push a car to its limit AND is capable of sensing what the car is doing well vs not in transitional corner phases, adjustable shocks can be used as the means to further improve the handling.
But, again, a big proviso here: one must absolutely feel the car, as well as understand how changing bump and rebound F vs R affects the handling. Now given that even some top shelf pros get it wrong from time to time, it is defo not an area for an average amateur to mess with. Cheers!

[kropscamaro16]

Originally Posted by TrackClub

Completely agree with the last 2 posts.
That's why top shelf shops sell coilover solutions.
Either static, or adjustable. Regarding the latter, one should be already a top shelf driver to take advantage of the adjustability (vs messing things up, which is easy to do). But, assuming one can push a car to its limit AND is capable of sensing what the car is doing well vs not in transitional corner phases, adjustable shocks can be used as the means to further improve the handling.
But, again, a big proviso here: one must absolutely feel the car, as well as understand how changing bump and rebound F vs R affects the handling. Now given that even some top shelf pros get it wrong from time to time, it is defo not an area for an average amateur to mess with. Cheers!

yup i always say even if i had the money for 2 or 3 way coilovers would i even know how to adjust them or set them? nope lol not that good my buddy just did some mcs 1 way on his zl1 1le and i thought he was crazy but he said the same thing...

[Msquared]

Guys, I'd suggest going back to review how springs and shocks actually work. If the springs are literally just lower with no change in rate, and you have the same damper rates (because you have changed out the dampers) then there is no difference in damper/suspension speeds at all. There's also no difference in the suspension's frequency or the amplitude (displacement) of the suspension travel (which again means no change in velocities). So it can't possibly wear out the dampers faster to have lower ride heights with no changes in rates.

If you increase the spring rate but don't change the damper rates, you increase the suspension's frequency but you also shorten its amplitude (displacement). So you're still not significantly changing overall piston speeds. You still can't wear out a damper with spring rate changes.

As I wrote before, all this assumes you still have bump stops that prevent the damper from bottoming out (or topping out) the piston...obviously. Also, I'm not recommending lowering the car without increasing spring and damping rates. Doing that is likely to result in worse handling from the suspension bottoming out and suddenly hitting a near infinite wheel rate: not ideal for handling!* In fact, when it comes to road course and autocross use, I'm a fan of stiffer springs than most. But it's not going to prematurely wear out the dampers.

*Which, btw, is the big reason I'm not a fan of progressive spring rates: having variable wheel rates means handling balance is always changing.

[JamesNoBrakes]

Originally Posted by Msquared

Guys, I'd suggest going back to review how springs and shocks actually work.

Lowering springs are shorter and have less travel, to avoid bottom-out, they require a higher spring rate. Suspension 101.

It would be exceptionally rare to have lowering springs that are of the same rate, as that would cause bottoming with the shorter spring AND you don't have the clearance in the wheel-well for the original suspension travel. Less travel requires higher spring rate to avoid bottoming.

[Alpha1BC]

Originally Posted by Msquared

Guys, I'd suggest going back to review how springs and shocks actually work. If the springs are literally just lower with no change in rate, and you have the same damper rates (because you have changed out the dampers) then there is no difference in damper/suspension speeds at all. There's also no difference in the suspension's frequency or the amplitude (displacement) of the suspension travel (which again means no change in velocities). So it can't possibly wear out the dampers faster to have lower ride heights with no changes in rates.

If you increase the spring rate but don't change the damper rates, you increase the suspension's frequency but you also shorten its amplitude (displacement). So you're still not significantly changing overall piston speeds. You still can't wear out a damper with spring rate changes.

As I wrote before, all this assumes you still have bump stops that prevent the damper from bottoming out (or topping out) the piston...obviously. Also, I'm not recommending lowering the car without increasing spring and damping rates. Doing that is likely to result in worse handling from the suspension bottoming out and suddenly hitting a near infinite wheel rate: not ideal for handling!* In fact, when it comes to road course and autocross use, I'm a fan of stiffer springs than most. But it's not going to prematurely wear out the dampers.

*Which, btw, is the big reason I'm not a fan of progressive spring rates: having variable wheel rates means handling balance is always changing.

I'm very familiar with how dampers work. I've been working with some form of chassis or vehicle dynamics engineering for the past 11 years, a few years of which were focused exclusively on dampers and their failure modes. I'm not trying to say that you (or probably any other Camaro owner for that matter) will see premature failure from changing spring rates within the current realm of available spring rates. A Camaro's use case, especially one that the owner is swapping springs on, is very unlikely to experience enough rate change and consistent use on a rough enough surface to significantly reduce damper life. As I stated before, if someone on here does change stuff drastically enough to do that they're probably going to have other issues crop up first.

All I'm doing is putting an asterisk on the "You still can't wear out a damper with spring rate changes" claim. You can do this in at least two ways:

1. Rate Decrease: Too much of a decrease means the damper will be doing more work in compression. Less spring force = more compression speed = more damper force = early fatigue of valve shims.
2. Rate Increase: As you stated, increasing rate only will typically allow higher frequency but lower displacement. The problem comes when the fluid/valves can't damp these motions out because they're not moving in enough one direction to build the fluid pressure to generate damping forces. Small imperfections in the road surface and wheel/rotor imbalances can set this off and won't always have enough energy to be perceived as a noise or vibration by the driver, but if left like that long enough it can wear out piston seal prematurely meaning fluid travels around the piston instead of through it. At that point it can turn into a cascading effect through the system as the damping forces continue to drop. This phenomenon happens to an extent even with all OE parts, but increasing spring rate and shifting the natural frequency of the system outside the range where friction and fluid pressure are able to damp it out can make it fail faster.

Again, not saying this will likely happen on many (if any) 6th gen Camaros from changing to lowering springs since all the spring rates available are pretty much in the same ballpark as OEM, but it's still a real possibility to prematurely fail a damper from spring rate changes.