Sorry, there is no such thing as a lower, better handling spring that has superior ride comfort. It is impossible. If it is lower, and rides smoother, then it is a poorly designed spring, period, and will not handle as well as it should. Spring rate goes up with a shorter spring (at least if it is designed correctly).

My car on TRDs:


No way you can say you cant notice the drop.

I am not trying to sell people on TRD's, but just clarifying some information. I like the TRDs for what they are, a good mix of daily driver and handling. However, I will be going for tein SS-P's or something similar down the road to tailor it more towards autox. I am outgrowing the TRD's as I learn the car more on the course. It does do pretty well though with the way I have it set up now. But it could be better.

The 1.4" inches of drop was determined by both a source listed in this topic as well as Raamaudio (rick) who set up a 100% prepped tC for autox (probably the most thorough build for this on the tC I have seen). It is determined by suspension geometry. Roll axis, the position of the control arms, CG, etc are all part of how you determine this. While you may think that the car handles well during your daily driving with it over-lowered, it will not handle as well as the proper drop on the right spring rate. This is what track racers and autox'rs deal with when fully prepping a car.

The ideal setup on the tC should be a 1.4" drop with stiffer rates (as stiff as you are willing to deal with on the street) springs. However, if you are just going for looks, then that is fine, just know the difference between what handles best and what you think looks good. On the street, driving like an average joe back and forth to work, you may not notice the difference that much. Get it on an autox course and it will be a whole different ball game. You can then see what the over lowering does to the car. A guy on ystc dumped his 2" drop after autoxing once. Too unpredictable, hard to handle on the quick transitions, etc.

Also, if you are not going to corner balance the car and really tune it, dont bother wasting your money on adjustable coilovers. Unless of course you want to bottom it out for shows and then raise it back up I guess. Just get a good set of springs with the drop you want and save yourself some money. The adjustable coilovers are for adjusting no need to spend money on them if you arent going to use them.

 

Here's the link to Sport Compact Car's Project tC car where Progress installed their coilovers on the tC and determined a 1.38" drop was best for corner balancing:

http://www.sportcompactcarweb.com/pr...t_1/index.html

The article is probably a couple of years old and they don't say so in this part but their ultimate goal for modding this car was to outperform a stock Acura RSX Type S at a lower total cost. So the emphasis of the suspension work was on extending the handling limits of the tC, i.e. putting up better numbers on the skidpad & slalom, and not on looks.

 

engifineer,

I dont disagree with your information. you know a lot more about cars, than I do and have more experience than me when it comes to performance, I can only input from my personal experiences.

I dont think the op is using a fully modified car for autocross? will the extra mods in the car affect the reaction of the 1.4" amount? and if so, how will this affect the ops car?

will the op be autocrossing or just use his car for DD?

will the trd springs react the same way on a stock car, than a completely modified car with coilovers using the same 1.4" drop?

for dd will trd benefit really more so than h techs?

op doesnt seem to be using any support in his suspension such as sway/strutbars or c pillars?

so on a stock car are you positive trds are better for him than the h techs?

I actually perceived a much different experience than yours, though my experience does not include autocross prepped suspension, coilovers or optimized braces.

what I did was just used it with a trd sway and 18s with both the htech and trds. And Ive found the htechs to be the better spring for everything I use the car for in my daily driving.
on the freeway, on the on ramps, changing lanes at higher speeds, I felt the exact opposite of what you're saying. trds were sloppy at higher speeds and unpredictable as opposed to the htechs which feel much more balanced to me and didnt have the steering wheel jerk around everytime I hit a bump and cause the whole car to shift like my trds, which to me felt sloppy.

and I was also informed while researching the htechs before muying that that these springs had a lot of R&D done to make them ideal for the tc. The stechs not so much...

 

maybe it was just me.. .but thats the exact reason why i went with htechs (not trying to bag on trds or anthing btw )...

when i was shopping for springs and looking at pictures and testimonials.. the reviews were really inconsistant with trds.. some cars were pretty much stock height, while some looked lower than htechs (all of which were on stock rims).

but to the op.. have fun with stechs.. lol.

 

ADRdesignCo do u have any pics of ur lowered ride? I'm gonna buy a set of H-Techs tomorrow ad I want to make sure I'm going with the right ones.

 

I do not have any other support in my suspension (sways, strutbars, ect.) yet. That is the next thing I am going to do on my car, is beef up the suspension pretty good. With my trds, I could barely tell I lowered my car, I woul dpost pictures on here on of it and people would tell me the first thing I should do is lower my car, but it was already loswered on trds. The trds I also felt were sorta sloppy like RnB180 said. I went with stechs because i liek the look of them with 18 inch wheels, I did all the research on it to make sure I wasnt going to rub. And when I finish my suspension, it will handle well enough for me. I dont really autocross maybe one here or there for fun, but it is just a DD i drive to work and back everyday.

Thanks for everyones help. Ill get some pictures when I install them sometime this week.

 

well what Ive heard from rumors is that trds are rebadged eibach springs. Anyone know if this is true?

and yes I agree with OP, that the trd drop is too subtle, next to another stock tc, its difficult to tell one is dropped more than the other, at a glance they look the same. I was really the only one that knew it was dropped, none of my friends thought it was on lowered springs. Its just the trd springs have such a humungous wheel gap in the front aesthetically, not very good looking.


when I got the h techs it was obvious and people knew it was lowered.

 

I believe that is true about who makes the TRDs. Being too subtle is just personal preference really. I dont like the car lowered much more than that. To me, makes it look out of place and make the fender cutouts look like they were cut incorrectly. So that will differ person to person. I have had plenty of people that dont even own tC's say mine looked more agressive than a stock one, so the drop is more than noticeable. But again, everyone has thier own idea of what looks good.

To answer the question about the height being different based upon other mods.. you can have some mods that compensate for other items being out of whack with anything. But, optimum ride height will not change unless you move the CG in relation to the rest of the car, fabricate new mounting points for the suspension components, etc. So in 99.999% of the tC's out there, optimum ride height is going to be the same.

Basically, you have the CG of the car, acting upon the roll axis to cause body roll. The length of the distance between the CG and roll axis determines the roll couple. So part of the fight is to lower the CG and shorten the roll couple. It is possible to make the relationship worse if you over lower. You also have the suspension geometry to think about and the way forces are distributed when you corner. If you just slam the car, you throw all of that out of whack and actually make things worse.

And yes, for the guy that just buzzes back and forth to work and never pushes the car, they may not notice the improvement or worsening of handling much at all. The lower CG will make them feel they have made a good change and that is about it. However, if you go too extreme, you can make the car handle poorly in emergency situations... which is not as safe as it should be. Too many people just buy a car and slam it, not finding out how terribly it really handles until they make an emergency maneuver on the street and end up spinning the car or hitting something.

The more you get into suspension, the more you will find out you need to learn, and the more you will realize that what is usually done to a car suspension wise is a poor choice for overall handling.

I want mine to look good (and it does with the TRD drop.. it gets a lot of compliments, yet doesnt look like it is slammed.. that is what I want from it) and handle well. So I am not willing to sacrifice the latter. Ride comfort I am willing to sacrifice, which is just a must do if you want it to handle better and ride lower. Like I have mentioned before, I will most likely switch to adjustable coilovers with high rate springs (but not so high that it handles poorly over bumps.. yet more to consider :D ), corner balanced with hotchkis sways. I will lose a lot of the comfort on the street over my current setup, but will make it handle better.... its always a compromise!

 

I did have one emergency situation while on the h techs for one occasion, it was raining and a van hydro planed and almost t-boned me on the freeway as he was merging(he slid across two lanes, I swerved out around it before it couldve struck me and for sure I thought my car wouldve spun out, but the car stayed level and glued to the road never breaking a sweat,

But Id attribute that to the Good Lord protecting me, rather than my h tech springs

it was a miracle that my car didnt spin out in the rain, it was as if I was driving on dry ground laced with glue even though it was pouring. after that another car passed by me and looked over and gave me a "how the heck did you pull that off" look.


needless to say, that van realized he wasnt driving a formula 1 car and after nearly hitting me, decided to slow down in the rain rather than drive it like he was running the 1/4 mile.

Now whenever I see these huge pick up trucks and vans weaving in and out of traffic, I get upset, because those kind of cars aren't very stable for such wreckless driving, its an accident waiting to happen.