So, my brother told nme about this new way to lower your car without lowering springs. So, basically you take a torch and heat up a coil or two on the springs and it will heat up so then the weight of the car will push the spring down, so we lowered his Altima 2" up front and 1.5" out back, he doesn't notice any drastic changes in the suspension or anything, if anything it handles better, but i was wondering if this was bad for the springs or anything. Was thinking about doing to to my future rex.
I attached a pic of how it looks now AFTER being lowered, b4 the lowering it looked liek a frigen monster truck
Thats some old school stuff. Friends of mine where doing that back in highschool. You are tempering the metal. I dont know of the long term affects though, most of my friends car didnt last long anyways. FWD snow, and being young and dumb dont mix.
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Joshua
"Stage 2, not so cool anymore, starting to get bored now."
So, basically you take a torch and heat up a coil or two on the springs and it will heat up so then the weight of the car will push the spring down
Thats how they did it before they had lowering springs.
Heating up the coils to lower them is not good for the metal, it makes it weaker by changing its characteristics. I definitely would not do to it a WRX, unless you don't plan on really driving her hard, cause there is a risk of a spring maybe braking or something. Cutting them would have been a much safer way to do it.
This is a horrible idea. Not only are you weakening the metal, you're changing the rating of the spring. On top of that, the rating will be nonuniform. Good thing you guys tried it on his car first. I also highly recommend you not cut springs. It has its own consequences. A set of good lowering springs will only set you back 180-200. Even used ones would be a better option then the two methods.
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Jon
"We live for a good time, not a long time."
RIP Colin McRae
This will decrease the car's handling and it's pretty dangerous. Way too much to pay for looks IMHO. As has been said, you've just seriously ####ed the springs. Their compression is totally out of skew now and they're the total wrong length for their new compression given the car's setup. It would be similar to throwing the springs from, say, a toyota trecel on there just because you wanted to independant of the facts that they're completely wrong.
Worse than all that though, you've just ####ed with the metal that's supporting the thousands of pounds of your car from crushing your wheels. Hit a bump too hard, you might snap them. I'm not kidding. The metal tempered to act like a spring and you heating it just changed it's properties. That kind of pressure on metal that's well outside of it's tension range = SNAP = car falling on it's wheels = a danger to yourself AND OTHERS!
You should be smacked on the back of the head for this one. Hard. If you do that kind of stuff on a car that is actually worth something, you'll be out of a good bit of money sooner than later but worse, you could get yourself or somebody else hurt! If it was that easy to improve the suspension, don't you think they would have come like that from the factory? For the love of god, start using your head.
Laugh Now, Cry later is what this Altima's about... Sure it's basically a grandma's car but it's one spankin quick grandma's car. Basically a grandma's Altima that spanks on Z28 Camaro's in it's N/A form, and EVOs and Corvettes in it's boosted form
well thanks for clearing it up for me, we didnt heat up the whole spring, just like one coil. but now i know better so i wont do it to ma rex. Thanks for the answers, no matter how brutal they are.
well, we learned about this technique from a guy that did it to a bunch of old corollas, and he takes these corollas and rally races them. he never mentioned any bad side effects... and i'm pretty sure rally racing has its fair share of bumps.......
great, so it's not even a consistent spring rate. LOL that's even worse. I hope the wheels don't fall off when you're driving in front of somebody I know...
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Springs question... not about lowering springs
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