ebraketurn

Thinking of going to Swift Sport springs on my '05 with (new-ish) oem shocks and swaybars. The F/R stiffness on the Swifts looks like it's quite a bit more rear-biased than the stock springs. I'm pretty happy with the level of understeer in the stock setup - there's a lot of forgiveness there with lifting on the throttle in a turn. I'm wondering how much of the understeer is dialed out with the Swifts.

Car Analogy

Its obvious from the spring rates these, like most all other lowering springs, were designed during ap1 era, and largely follow the spring bias of the early models.

Perhaps its not surprising that none of these vendors went back and redesigned their product when ap2 came out. Why go through the expense if the product still sells?

I understand your concern. Yet many, many people have fitted lowering springs to their ap2 with these or similar rates, and I don't recall anyone complaining it made the car too tail happy.

Perhaps thats because anyone really serious about suspension performance goes with full coilovers. Anecdotal evidence would suggest a high correlation to people that run coilovers also switching to square stagger. Thus coilover spring rates seem to be even more front biased (to maintain balance you'd need more front spring bias if going square).

So if you're comparing lowering spring rates to coilover spring rates, its a bit apples and much different apples. Coilovers seemto target square while lowering springs target stock stagger.

Also keep in mind ap2 also switched stagger. There is alot more meat at the back. So you need more rear bias to maintain balance compared to ap1.

My advice, mount the springs and see how you like them. If they are too tail happy, get a larger front swaybar.

Your car stock has a combined wheel rate F/R balance of 55.8%/44.2%. Stock springs, stock bars.

If you switch to Swift Sport, which are spec'ed at rate of 258/366 (in/lbs), your balance jumps to 52.1%/47.9%. Thats nearly what '00 ap1 had stock (stock '02-'03 had the most rear bias, '00-'01second most).

Fitting the stock CR or stock '00-'01 front swaybar (they're virtually identical), and leaving rear bar stock would get you back to 55.4%/44.6%, almost exactly where you were stock.

If somehow that isn't enough, you could switch to so called CR tire sizing, upping to 255 rear (I say so called because CR rear wasn't really a larger rear than regular ap2. The tires chosen for CR didn't come in a 245 size, so Honda just used what was available, which was called a 255, but was really only a fraction wider than tires factory fitted to normal ap2. So reality is stock CR tires woukd be 215/245 in any other tire).

ebraketurn

excellent, thanks! I think I'll stick with stock wheel / tire sizing. I'm not tracking or autocrossing it so coilovers are going to be overkill for me.

jyeung528

ap2 understeer blows. you'll like the swift setup.

noodels

^^^^^
Fitting the stock CR or stock '00-'01 front swaybar (they're virtually identical), and leaving rear bar stock would get you back to 55.4%/44.6%, almost exactly where you were stock.