izenja

I bought my first S2000 a week ago and I'm loving it. One of the concerns I had from the start is that the rear sits fairly low while the front is high. It has Koni Yellows on, and the previous owner told me it has stock springs all around, which left me perplexed about the cause of the height difference. After reading about the springs from various years and checking a hunch, I now know that it does have the stock 02 springs, but the fronts and rears are swapped. I don't know if the PO did this on purpose or not, but he was a successful autocrosser so I guess he probably did.

I actually think the car handles and feels great as it is, but it likely could be better and the height difference is too weird (and I plan on trying it in the winter; the rear is too low right now for winter driving). One option I'm considering obviously is swapping the springs back to where they should be. I see that a lot of people run stiffer fronts than rears though, and the stock rears are significantly stiffer than the front ones. I'm wondering if I should do some sort of compromise, and that's what opinions I'm asking about now.

Should I maybe leave the rears on the front as-is, but then also get another pair of 02 rears to put on the back? That's one of my favorite ideas so far. Should I get some of the stiffer springs from another MY to put on the rears (and maybe fronts too)? Maybe even aftermarket springs (and which ones)? With stock ones, if they're too high, I can lower it by moving the Koni perches. What I'm looking for is primarily a good ride for daily driving, while also handling great. I will do little to no racing, but I do appreciate a high performance feel. Taming the typical oversteer sounds like a nice goal for the benefit of being able to take corners quick at times without as much fear of spinning. I don't want anything too much lower than stock (probably 1" max).

Slowcrash_101

Maybe he put the rear on the lower spring perch.

Chuck S

If the middle dot is orange it's a rear spring for sure. I'm taking a wild guess that the Honda engineers know more than I do about front and rear springs and am leaving mine stock. A buddy just restored his lowered '02 to OEM condition with the proper '02 springs. He notes the car rides and handles much nicer.

Lower spring perch? I'm curious.

-- Chuck

HarryD

Why not ask the previous owner, if he was a successful AutoX guy? Learn his thought process exactly.

+1 on returning back to original, driving that for a while, and then modifying later if you need to after that baseline.

Car Analogy

If the po had them both on the lower perches, you could move the rears only up to the higher perch. I think someone else was alluding to this.

If they are already on the higher perches, then you could swap front and rear back, then get a stiffer front swaybar to tame the oversteer.

Oversteer slows you down in autocross. So it makes some sense for op to have swapped springs as part of effort to tame things.

Sent from my SM-G920P using IB AutoGroup

izenja

Sorry, I should have specified that the Konis are already on the stock height perches. Also, I'm sure about the springs because I looked at the color codes on them. I mentioned the perches because if a stiffer combination of springs ends up too high, I could just lower the perches to compensate.

I likely will just swap it back to how it should be but I'm still considering options and opinions. Sway bars on the front would be a nice option but it's both more difficult and more expensive, and it doesn't counter dive. I will definitely put the rear springs back on the rear where they should be, but the reason I'm considering different springs for the front is because the newer years went stiffer for a good reason (although I know the sway bars are different too) and the balance and handling should be better with stiffer front springs (in theory, at least - I agree it would be at least worth trying it in the stock configuration to see what I think). I don't want to ask the PO because he was hiding the fact that he autocrossed to begin with. I only found out afterwards (I don't really care though), plus he was set up for autocross purposes and I won't be doing that. That basically shut down in my city

twohoos

Yeah autoxers are notorious for going stiff as hell up front so they can use wider tires. He prob had a huge front bar too, then took off the bar and forgot to swap back the springs.

OE springs (and bars) are cheap in the marketplace, and since you can adjust the perches, there's no reason not to experiment with various setups.

Cheers

s2000Junky

If it handles good maybe just leave it alone, or drop the front lower perch to compensate ride height gap, but still leaving the stiffer rear springs up front. Generally the stock set up wants to overseer, not as much as the 00-01 but still has that bias to a lessor degree. Returning back to stock spring rate and higher rear ride height will make the car feel more twitchy and overseer in the rear, making it harder to drive fast predictably for most novice drivers. There is a reason why changes were made in later years to re bias this cars suspension to less stiff in the rear.

If you want to know what works fantastic with the ap1 chassis from stock, its maintaining a similar factory tire % stagger, but with the stiffer 00-01 front sway bar, a lighter ap2 rear sway and the same coil spring rate front to back with a complimentary weight to what your grip levels will be with tire widths and compound. For my set up its 14k spring rate paired with an extreme summer compound in a 255/295 stagger.

nibble

like others said, ask PO. Also, if you are thinking of changing it, why not go with CR springs?

izenja

Thanks for the inputs. I think my two leading options are right now for the fronts are either the CR rear springs (343 lb/in as opposed to 246 stock fronts) or the 02 rear springs (309 lb/in). I'd putting the stock 02 rear springs on the rear (i.e. the ones that I currently have on the front). Any recommendations between those two choices or a better aftermarket equivalent? I doubt I'd be able to find either pair used, so I'd have to buy them new, therefore there's not much reason to not get the CR ones if the rate is better. The sway bars would likely be staying as they are at least for now (stock, I assume), so the stiffer CR spring on the front would better balance out the much stiffer rear sway bar - it would end up as 343F/309R springs, 300F/396R sways.

I think a full CR setup would be okay too but it would be maybe a bit too stiff and would cost twice as much. I had high spring rate coilovers that were underdamped on my previous car and didn't enjoy that too much.