TeamSwift

isnt stiffer more boucing?? i was thinking heating my springs put all my friends said ill be boucing everywhere theres a bump

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2000 metro L"Si":)
2001 suzuki swift

Not if you also increase the damping on your shocks, either by purchasing better ones or doing this:

http://www.teamswift.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=25593

Do not heat your springs!!! That will just ruin them. Are you being sarcastic or are you just not paying any attention at all??

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1994 Swift GT chump special autocross warrior

i got a set of front srpings form a vw passat 90, to my sedan, for the rears, very colose measures to stock springs, only 1cm more im out diameter
on top they are the same, but 2 coils more than gti springs
cut 1 1/2 and fitted fine

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http://www.cardomain.com/memberpage/811447

So what type of sprins you thing I should get???

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2000 metro L"Si":)
2001 suzuki swift

Front springs from a 90 vw passat fit the rears for the sedan? Are they stiffer?

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I ride a Honda, but I drive a Suzuki.

99 Honda CB600F Hornet
90 Suzuki Swift 1.6 GLX 4WD

they fit indeed, they are from a diesel car , front , they handle with the heavt diesel engines, they are more stiffer than my old ones, the gti springs , in the sedan i liked a lot
but way more longer, had to be cutted

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http://www.cardomain.com/memberpage/811447

Thanks for the info, I was searching for a suitable replacement as my rear ones are way too weak, if there are 2 people in the back, it's riding way too low.

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I ride a Honda, but I drive a Suzuki.

99 Honda CB600F Hornet
90 Suzuki Swift 1.6 GLX 4WD

ok ´i´m glad i could help, btw nice looking sedans on your album
i also got a sedan, soon will be stock rear, since it´s modified

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http://www.cardomain.com/memberpage/811447

If my ill brother sits in the back my tires hit my wheel wells:( fml I'm guessing it's cuz I have 16in rims on my 2000metro

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2000 metro L"Si":)
2001 suzuki swift

I cut my springs last weekend. I had 96 sedan springs In my 93 to lift it. Then I cut a coil all around. Brought it back to stock height. Might be useful for those who want maintain stock hieght but stiffer springs in their mk3

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GEO MAFIA!
00 swift 2dr 1.3 5spd dd. Has redneck front end after fight with tree
93 geo metro with 96 1.3 5spd swap turboed at 5psi. Sold to roommate.
88 suby justy 1.2 5spd 4wd. Efi conversion. Supercharger waiting
12 ford focus. Wife's. 50mpgs @ 35mph 6th gear.

i have a 93 3cyl 5spd a/c metro. i got all 4 springs from a 2000 metro sedan at the junkyard for 40 bucks. cut 1 coil off them and put them on kyb gr2 struts. i dont have any before pics.....the car had 12's on it and the back was sagging heavily from 290,000 miles of abuse. i put 15x6.5 wheels on with 45mm of offset. 195/50 falken tires. i have about a 2 inch gap between front fender and tire....never rubs and i drive the sh!t outta this car. i have 1 3/4 inches of clearance in the back. the back tires rub the inside on the shock tower at full suspension droop. so when jacking from the body or when rear end gets very light. a 5mm spacer would fix it. i also installed the sway bars from the sedan, put on poly bushings all the way around, and ultra racing upper and lower front strut tower braces as well. all mods were done at same time.

btw, i can put 4 full size adults in the car and nothing rubs. i also get tons of negative camber in rear, but this isnt the best solution for good handling as the car seems a little sluggish

my problem with the setup is that now the front is too high....i need to cut maybe a quarter coil more off to look level. and the car understeers worse than it did stock. can anyone help me figure out why??? i know lowering the rear more than the front makes the car push, but i expected better results. i have 1 degree neg camber up front with @ 2 degrees neg caster, nearly zero toe. rear is 1 degree neg camber at ride height and zero toe. i do have more caster on drivers side by almost a degree.....

do i need to get softer front springs? or a smaller sway bar? ive upped the rear tire pressure to 35 and dropped the front to 29.....little results on either. how about toe settings? and caster in front? i havent gotten the front caster kit yet. i was waiting to see if i wanted strut tops on a daily driver before i went there.

i am getting ready to fit gt knuckles and brakes up front. i will cut the springs again then. should i raise the rear instead?

any other advice? maybe take the bar off the front and see how it drives? the frickin exhaust is hitting it when i hit bumps anyway.....

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93 metro 1.0/5spd/ac

Bingo. That's the fastest route back to handling neutrality and will also drastically increase grip on the inside front tire coming out of a corner.



Not necessarily--in fact I would expect the opposite, as lowering the rear a bit more adds a bit of caster and grip to the front. Also, when you cut springs, the more you cut them, the stiffer they get, shifting weight away from that end of the car. I lowered the front and back almost exactly evenly and still had a push. There are more complicated reasons why this might be, but I suspect that the design of the rear springs is the most important factor--if you look at the design, the bottom coil is flattened so it is in contact with the spring perch almost all the way around. It is therefore not an "active" coil and doesn't fully participate in supporting the car. The front is the same, but less so. The result of this is that one coil off the back increases the spring rate less in proportion to the increase on the front for the same amount taken off. The good news is that the increased spring rate in the front should help enough with body roll that dropping that front bar won't increase it too much, plus with the back bar still on, your traction coming out of a corner should be improved.

I'd try dropping the front bar before you do anything else.



That's only going to have the effect you want if 29 psi is the optimal pressure for grip for your tires. It does shift the weight in the correct direction, but you might want to try something different. When I first started autocrossing I was totally befuddled by the fact that some drivers were increasing the pressure in the rear tires to decrease understeer and others were decreasing the pressure to do the same thing. As it turns out there is a "sweet spot" range of pressures where a given size and make of tire will grip the best and you can balance the car by knocking the tires out of this sweet spot in either direction. The problem with increasing is that many tires make their best grip at fairly high pressures so increasing the pressures to move them out of the zone starts to get a little freaky on the street. For example, if you are running Falken Ziex 912's, the optimal grip is probably around 40-42 psi (source: lots of research on autocross forums, asking around--I dont' have a skidpad). So you could try running 40 psi front and 44 or even more in the back, which I've done with good results. However, that much pressure does not make for a great ride and the breakaway is less progressive, so you might want to go the other way. You might have to go with a greater difference in pressure, but you will also have lots more room to experiment.

Another thing to know is that, while it can eat tires in an annoying way by flat spotting them, you can quite easily adjust the balance of the car by using a little toe out in the rear--no matter how bad your car is pushing, if you dial in enough toe out (see above comment about tires) the rear will come around.

The caster kit is worth the money and will also help the push, but you might be able to save some change if you can get those D bushings off the front intact. You should be able to increase caster quite a bit by simply adding a couple of washers in front of them to move the control arm forward--the kit just adds a little more yet by offsetting the bushing. I have the bushings but got the Superpro rather than Whiteline. They didn't come with spacers like the Whiteline kit, but I found that they are just washers so I got some extra ones from the junkyard to get as much caster as possible. The washers seemed to move the arm as much or more than the bushing alone, which is why I suggest trying it.

Camber bolts are also relatively cheap and easy to install and will help with grip in the front to tackle that push--caster is better, but you need more than 1 degree neg. camber up front for sure.

The best solution of all is to replace the strut tops with something better, but that's considerably more commitment as some fabrication and $$ are needed. I am still in the process of sorting that one out on my car.

Something I just tried with some success that you might try experimenting with is fitting some sections of very thick 1/2" ID hose around the bottoms of your cut springs. This will help the springs seat and the thickness of the hose has the added advantage of acting as a spacer so you can cut just a hair more off the springs, stiffening them ever so slightly more for the same ride height.

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1994 Swift GT chump special autocross warrior

thats alot of info in one post.............thanks

ill take the bar off tomorrow and go back to 34 psi all around and start over

im getting the whiteline kit.....my arms still have the rubber bushings on them.

i will probably get the strut tops on here from that aircraft engineer dude. they look like good stuff.

i was worried about road noise with the solid mount, but hell, the car isnt really meant to be luxurious is it?

i set the rear toe at zero, thinking with neg camber and any slop thats there.....i would end up with dynamic toe-out and quicker rear turning?

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93 metro 1.0/5spd/ac

Yep. And more toe out in the rear = even quicker rear turning. (Tending to oversteer quite quickly on corner exit due to the flexing of the stock toe bars--get ready to catch it.)



How did I miss this? I think it's too late for me as I already purchased some "universal strut tops" hoping to drill them to fit, but who's selling them on here? Link?

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1994 Swift GT chump special autocross warrior

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93 metro 1.0/5spd/ac

Oh yeah, those. I balked at shipping from Poland. In retrospect I think those would have been a better option than what I ended up with, but I can make what I have work--we'll see.

ok......i took off the front bar this weekend and upped the tire pressure to 32 in the front left at 34 in rear.

i couldnt find any info as to what pressure to start at for these tires and this car. found alot of chatter, but no good info to suit my car.

i would tend to think that running full or overinflated pressure on these tires and this car would cause overinflation wear due to the huge difference in size from stock, and the cars light weight. not sure though. ive got 4000 miles on the tires already and the inside tire on the right side is showing a little more wear than the rest. no cupping or any other discernable wear. normal i would say for neg camber on the street. wear could be from the 2 nasty high speed left hand corners between home and wifes workplace.

the car drives much better without the bar. it still has a touch of understeer so i guess i dont need a front bar at all, or at least with my current weight/setup. i have induced more body roll obviously, but the car does not slide anywhere near as bad. the outside tire howls now at the limit, which it did not do before.

my next round of mods is front knuckles, hubs, axles, rotors, calipers from a gti. after that, i am planning to get the whiteline caster kit, some solid adjustable strut top mounts, and a 4 point front underbody brace to replace the 2 point one i currently have. ill get the car realigned and post new findings here. might need a bar then? smaller bar?

anybody have suggestions on alignment specs for me? daily driver 3cyl/5speed a/c, 195/50/15's, kyb gr2 struts, poly bushes all around, stock 2000 metro sedan rear sway bar and upgrades mentioned above? right now i have just over 1 degree neg camber front and rear. @2 degrees caster front. and toe is set at near zero both ends.

i know i need more caster, so should i go as far as kit will let me, or is there a sweet spot in there somewhere? i know to much will cause the car to be harder to turn at parking speeds......no power steering on a 3cyl metro.

thanks for the help

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93 metro 1.0/5spd/ac

Dethbrd:

We've pretty much hijacked this thread at this point, which is probably not the best thing on a sticky topic, though I think it's still useful information for those wishing to improve handling on a bang-for-buck and simple-is-good basis.

So you might want to start your own thread on your suspension set up as it evolves. That way I feel less guilty writing long responses on one of the few topics on the forum I know anything about. You have a pretty good handle on how things work, though, so I am not sure why you are even asking

I've actually been competing on a setup very similar to what you are running, so if you get bored you may want to peruse my track-talk thread to see what worked for me: http://www.teamswift.net/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=53180

I've also recently updated the bushing install and Honda caliper swap sticky posts with pictures.

As far as tire pressures go, you will find that what is best for grip isn't best for tire wear when you aren't constantly at the limit. For example, I wasn't crazy when I suggested 40 psi as a good starting point for best grip with the Falkens--a 6" wheel is still a narrow one and you don't have much camber. I had the best autocross times at around 40, but even with 1 degree neg camber you'll notice that the outside edge doesn't contact the road at all on the highway, yet you will still wear the tires unevenly on the outside if you really test the limits of your car in competition. Even with 44 psi you won't get excessive wear in the center like you would expect from overinflation, but not wearing the outside edge at all eventually makes the inside seem to wear that much faster. So you have to find a balance that suits you. Given that the sweet spot for grip is probably higher than you want to run on the street for tire wear and comfort (and just a bit higher yet than 34) it's possible that you might get a better balance by running 34 in the front and 32 or even 28 or less in the rear. Can't say for sure, but it's worth trying given the range where the tires make grip.

I would say I got my money's worth out of this set:



For alignment, just check it. The fact that you've got inside edge tire wear makes me wonder whether you have more toe out than you think. Toe out is way more of a tire killer than camber. I've found that while toe out in front is good for turn in I have also found that the difference in turn in between 1mm and 6mm is not much other than eating tires,so just a little will do. Zero is good in the back until you get your push sorted out, then if you finally get the car looser than you want somehow after the next round of upgrades you can dial in a mm or so of toe in to fix it if you need to. The things you have planned, i.e. caster kit, strut tops and a new brace probably won't affect your balance much because while grip will be increased slightly by keeping the wheel angle stable, the poly bushings are also a bit stiffer shifting the balance towards the front again slightly to make up for it. If you don't want a bar now, you probably won't want one later.

As far as caster goes, I've got about as much as you can get by moving the control arm (don't have strut tops yet) and any increase in steering effort has been barely noticeable, so I would go for as much as possible as the more you get the less camber you need.

Caveat: the best way to find out whether your set up is getting the most out of your tires is to use a skidpad, a G meter and a tire pyrometer, but a picture of the car cornering at the limit is useful too. You can get a visual as to whether the tire is close to perpendicular with the pavement, which is usually how you make the most grip.

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1994 Swift GT chump special autocross warrior

ditch those oem rear toe bars. they suck for controlling the rear toe in any postive way.

the rubber bushings on each end (probably dead) and the fact that the stamped steel bars flex like a wet spaghetti noodle offers little control of the knuckle.

i build these.

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1991 Blue Geo Metro Convertible highly modified 1.0L Turbo3 5 spd. - 1991 Red Geo Metro Convertible customized 1.0L 5 spd. - 1992 White Suzuki Swift GT

My Turbo3 Project

My Cardomain Page -Ol' Blue

My YouTube Channel

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SAAB Sonett II

did anyone here did the reenforcement of the rear springs using an inside rear spring in the middle of the stock rear springs?

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http://www.cardomain.com/memberpage/811447

I had an idea like that, might try it once my car is on wheels again.

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I ride a Honda, but I drive a Suzuki.

99 Honda CB600F Hornet
90 Suzuki Swift 1.6 GLX 4WD

i used a complete rubber hose with 6mm in thickness, on a complete coil turn, after cutting the spring, it´,s more stiffer and muche more grip on the road,
post pics when i got the time

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http://www.cardomain.com/memberpage/811447

has promised , the pics
you can see the rubber ring on the stock cutted springs is helping the last coil sitting on the rear suspension arm
and therefore the suspension gets more stiffer
never imagine a simple thing will give those beneficts

stock rear gti spring cutted in 3/4 coil with rubber hose on the last coil

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http://www.cardomain.com/memberpage/811447

I want to try this.....but.....
When looking at the expensive spring kits on ebay, most of them advertise to fit just about all, BUT the convertible.
I'd like to try the 95+ springs, cut about 3/4 of a coil, on my '91 Convertible. As both my Metro ragtops handle corners like a shrimp boat with the nets out.
Would this solution work on a '91 or '92 convertible? I plan on getting new KYB's to pair with them.
Any suggestions? Why do 'they' advertise, ( DO NOT FIT CONVERTIBLE MODELS )?

For my '91, I'm in the process of getting the sway bars from a '98 installed. Good, bad, or neutral?
I know neither will ever turn like my RX-7, but I want them to handle better than a '73 Torino.

5-7-13 Today, had my butt kicked. With a special thanks to Phil & Ed, was able to put in new KYB's thanks to his really good, "DIY rear Struts"
Too bad my pics are too big, but cut one coil off the 98chevymetro supplied springs, with a little trimmed off the edges. New KYB's, and have it back together. Seems to ride better, corner better, and sit an inch lower. Soon will do the front, soon as I find the sticky.

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'91 Metro 3 cyl. 'vert. 5 speed beater, built as a fun daily driver.
'92 Metro 3 cyl. 'vert. Auto, all factory clean.

I grabbed the springs from a 98 Chevy Metro 4 door Sedan/Saloon and put them on my 89 Metro 2 door hatchback. I also did the front brake/knuckle swap for a bigger brake caliper and 12mm lug studs. I had cut the stock metro springs about 1 3/4 coils and my car was very low on the stock 12inch wheels. However, I recently purchased 15 inch wheels and knew that the car would need to go up for them to fit. After installing the new springs, my car looked like a monster truck! Nearly a 5 inch gap from the top of the tire to the fender! So, I am cutting the new springs today 1 3/4 coils in the front. I will update with pics. The rim is 15x6.5 inch with a 38 offset, sitting on 195/50R15s.

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"with these powers, I could be a Super-Hero!"
...name the game and voice actor?