Ebay Coilover Spring Swap

[Rippthrough]

Yes there may be a risk of the spring becoming unseated but if you managed that driving it with the car that low you'd be doing well.

Doesn't matter how fookin low it is, you'll use the full extention over the next pothole you hit, you do realise the wheel leaves the floor over bumps and holes?!
And the spring vibrates up and down in waves as well as just extending and compressing? Yes, you can get away with it, no I don't want to be nearby the one time it does catch the edge.


You can strip and machine the bodies and shafts down, but by the time you've done that, it'll cost you more than buying something half decent to start with unless you already know what you're doing and have a sturdy lathe handy...
The easiest way, as was chatting with vicous about over on .net, would be to modify the top mounts to make them shorter, or lift the top of the turret upwards as close as you can get to the body - to do it properly, but that's only a job for someone who knows what they're doing too, which kinda goes agains the point of the Poundland special coilovers.
The only real thing I can suggest for those of you wanting to run that low, since you'll be on the bumpstops anyway, is to fit some decent progressive polyurethane bumpstops (like the powerflex ones the Gaz kits run), run a short, stiff main spring (Could use a stiff 4" helper spring really) that comes in just before the bumpstop, so you make the whole lot stiff enough to run on the stops but without mullering the stop, and then you run a long, soft helper for the rest of the droop travel.
The problem is the dampers won't have enough rebound to control that kind of spring rate, so although better than just slapping it on the bumpstops, it's still not going to handle very well. And your MOT tester wont like it.

Only thing I can say to sort them out properly would be to have a look around and see if anyone would shorten the units for you as a group for beer tokens, or see if the retailers can get hold of shorter inserts for them - then all you need to do is shorten the bodies to match with a grinder and welder, sorted.

For those of you not wanting arse-scraping ride heights, you've probably got just enough travel to keep the spring rate half sensible with regard to the damping (~300lbs area for the main spring), so long as you don't run any lower than what's been mentioned in the measurements above.