If you've got the skills to do it, have at it.

 

Lets see, hack up a car, to save a few hundred bucks, or purchase the correct parts, and spend an extra 300 bucks and have the parts bolt right on? Your car, your time, but I know what my choice would be...

 

Very common. Might look up extended tophats before hacking away. I know ground co from makes them for Hondas.

 

Im with Sean on this. Every bouncy Honda I have ever seen has had cut springs. Do it right or do it twice.

 

So not cutting springs and running evo x mr bilsteins new take offs with a higher mount on car is my idea. Our struts if lowered have crap for up travel. Coil overs cost about a grand. I could do this mod for 300. Not being cheap im just wondering if done correctly if it seams to be a good idea. I like to think outside the box. The rear suspension will prob be a 4 link 8.8 setup next season. Im not worried about cutting anything. Just looking for ideas.

 

Ummm.... what is your goal with this car?

 

If i cut all the upper strut mounts off the car and weld them higher like 1 inch.

Seems if you did it correct, You would get the travel while having the car sit lower.

 

Goal for the car is a great car. Will take to track alot, but drive it there. Engine forged internals, hx40 pro high boost, 4 255 pumps, e85, 1600cc injectors till i get larger. Custom topmount manifold, q45 tb, slowboy race intercooler, old style bushur smim, dsm link 3 speed density, built trans, act 2600 6 puck. Lots more too. Lol.

 

????? So you'll spend a good 10 grand in those mods but you're ok with cutting apart your strut towers to save a few hundred bucks? All for something that might work? Also, how well do you think your alignment is going to be afterwards? Doesn't make sense to me. I'd say try if it it's your daily or low budget project car or something, but not for what you want.

 

I only paid 500 for my Tein Flex coilovers on Ebay. My first set of flexs on my old GSX. I also only paid 500 for them. My first set was off craigslist. It sounds like you are building/built a pretty legit DD. Why cheap out at the end?

 

Spend money where i need to. Evo 10 struts bilsteins are not junk. As for metal cutting. No problem i have to weld in a cage anyway. I have more money in axles in my jeep than whole car. Im not really into the whole save money thing, as much as i am into doing something different that most people couldnt afford to do. Like my jeep has a incredible suspension design. Double triangulated 4 link wuth adjustable antisquat. I can pull any tire 67" off the ground with other 3 still touching ground

 

This is a sports car, not a Jeep. You do realize how bad the strut areas rust as it is right? what do you think is going to happen when you cut it up and use inferior metal treatment on it? the factory metal treatment is the best that there is period, why hack up another Dsm only to have it fall into the hands of another hopeful Dsmer in the future who will get discouraged with the mess you left and scrap it? These cars are becoming scarce as it is and you want to hack one up, that to me is a big no, maybe you should consider selling it and getting something different that rides how you want it? I wouldnt do it unless you want to do it right, it will never have proper alignment after that.

 

Well im just debating over idea. Not sold on it. But if you call adding crap metal to a car to make it rot you are way off. Like saying a chromoly cage will make car fall apart. Im not looking to hack a car up, im looking at redesigning a part of the car. We all use these cars not as intended. So we should go out and buy dragsters instead? Im getting ideas to make our cars better, not to scrap them. Im still in market for coilovers just thinking outside the box. Actually our cars have way simpler suspensions than a rock crawler,but the geometry and math is the same. Not trying to argue,just looking for ways to make dsm cars better. Our cars have alot to improve on suspension design.

 

I'm thinking you're looking to do what VW guys do. Cut the body where the strut bolts to and raise it? If so I think you'll run into an issue with hood clearance.

 

I was looking at that too. I think i can go 1" up with no issues. I have to get hood on when i get back in town. Thanks for heads up.

 

I absolutely love fabbing things up myself, but what you're trying to achieve is beyond not worth it. You're going to gain 1 inch of travel at best, so lets say 1/2" travel in each direction. How often are you hitting those bump stops that you need that extra 1/2"? Seems like you're trying to redesign the car for such nominal gains. If you wanna fab something up to get some better handling, look at the chassis. Try welding up some braces or something.

 

Agreed, if you want to fab stuff thats great, new ideas are always nice but modifying the suspension SOLELY to use a factory part off some other car, seems like a HUGE waste when you could do so much more if you are going to go through the trouble of re-designing what some very smart engineers already figured out how to do.

 

Just getting ideas. Just started getting to work on suspension. Might just go with agx and megan springs. Then next upgrade 8.8 axle and 4 link the rear. Im pretty good with suspension designs. So im looking at all possibilities. I have to finish weight reduction first. Car keeps getting higher as weight goes out.

 

Just know that the front steering components are among the most important part of the body and the part that engineers sweat over the most to get it right, someone re-designing it in the backyard is probably just a very bad idea, I can appreciate where your coming from but I would advise you to use bolt-on's to accomplish your goal, that way they can come back off later, thats all.

 

I love to see it done and documented. The gvr4 guys get to rob evo suspension why can't we?

 

Because we didnt buy the GVR4 we bought the DSM The same reason they cant rob our carbon fiber slick hatches and hoods and fenders etc. Be proud and know that the GVR4 guys will never have to deal with the problem of trying to have sex in their car.

 

Just idea to think about. When they designed our cars in the 90's bet you they did not think we would put ovet 500hp to these cars and i bet there idea was performance and save them as much money as possible. I want to improve the design if i modify it. If i do my 4 link rear i will be able to adjust antisquat, antidive, instant center, and so on. Im not saying hey i want to be cheap and raise my mounts to lower car. Maybe i can find a better setup with more adjustability. I didnt cut one thing on my jeeps suspension until i gully understood what i was doing and what i wanted to accomplish.

Right now im looking for opinions on how to not spend a fortune on coilovers and not have huge wheel gaps from taking weight out. Im running 245 45 16 tires on fd wheels and looks great w no spacers. I am gutting doors and removing all excess weight now. Prob some nice aluminum door panels will be made. Im tig welding a cage in asap. I just want a over the top car to have fun with. I sm out of parts to buy or fab for my jeep soon as i build its cage.

 

You might want to hold off and see what Buschur is going to offer up for sale for 1g upgrades, I know he is making the aluminum door panels, the aluminum rear interior, the aluminum mirror delete kit, the rear tubular setup of some kind, etc. Some of those might be able to be roughly transferred over to the 2g.

 

Thanks but ill make my own. More pride in built not bought. Plus i get my metal free. And those parts are pretty easy

 

OMG.... this isn't a jeep. It doesn't have 60" of ground clearance. It's AWD, you don't need antisquat or any of that shit. You still have your jeep mentality of I wanna customize this shit so i can raise a wheel 47" off the ground. Forget the numbers. All this shit you wanna do is so you can say your car can do it on paper. It's not going to provide any real world benefits. Tell me what anti squat or anti dive is going to do for you? Or what an extra inch of strut travel is going to mean. Unless you plan on going pothole hunting, you don't need every single inch of travel you can possibly squeeze out. Again, this isn't a jeep, it's a sports car. You can't make orange juice from apples.

 

Can you modify the struts instead? I have RRE modified koni yellows that have more travel. On a side note, I don't remember ever bottoming out my AGX / Pro-kit combo.

 

How does RRE modify the Koni shock to get more shock travel?

 

Maybe I read this all wrong but it seemed to me that the OP is trying to lower the car without loosing any travel, or a minimal amount of it.

If thats true then what he is proposing does make sense on paper, and if good enough could be done and work well on the car.

Maybe I am underthinking this but its a larger scale of what we do with drop spindles as opposed to 2" drop springs, rightish?

 

the OP is trying to lower the car without loosing any travel, or a minimal amount of it.

This, or have an OEM strut work at its normal extention.

The OP is asking how to correct something that is wrong with a lowered DSM, not asking how to do something on the cheap or ghetto way. Koni's hold up but Stock and AGX's blow out because the now lowered car has something wrong.

I think the pictures in this thread will help give you an idea for the strut.
http://honda-tech.com/showthread.php?t=2682022