Aw, cut in half, yes. Totally asking for trouble.

Sorry, I didn't realise you meant cut them in half. But people that do that also have an IQ less than half of the average.

i can justify it on uprated dampers, infact the GT i just bought has standard springs on uprated dampers and i've never driven anything like it! nice and comfy but still nice and firm in the corners!

basically there no cheap way around lowering though, cut a few coils for a temporary measure but don't expect it to handle and better or the shocks to last particularly long!

x2.

For something quick and temporary, yes. But for handling/performance whatever, then NO.

Nothing beats well priced suspension. You get what you pay for.

Suspension threads make me laugh.

People really know very little, I don't know a lot but I still know a lot more than some absolute horse shite I read on here

I know nothing. :(

i know that an angle grinder is cheaper than lowering springs

And you can do more shit with an angle grinder.

Aw, can you cut this fence down? NOT WITH LOWERING SPRINGS YOU CAN'T.

I don't even own an angle grinder.

Sad face

why bother with cut springs when there is enough choice to get lowered springs in pretty much any desired drop for less than £100, even less if you buy second hand.

angle grinder is only £15

spend the £75 on take aways

what will you do with the other tenner?

LOOL my bad.. meant £85 hahahah

Edited 1 March, 201313 yr by erixtar1992

Postage for Grinder

I once went for a ride in a car with cut springs.

It killed me, the driver and the nearest 3000 pedestrians/kittens/bunnies. Bumpy as fuck too.

Lowering a car isn't really ideal anyway. And a lot of shit is just advertising gimmicks to make people buy stuff... "15% up rated damping" where exactly? Rebound? Compression? Critical damping? Bypass change?

People just see the word uprated and buzz out their tits.

I bought coilovers for my 6n...gutted you got mugged off, it has coilovers from the factory

how was what i said stupid atall? standard springs and shocks are designed for a certain amount of travel, limit that travel and your asking for trouble.

when you load up a car the spring loads and gets stiffer, therefore limiting the travel. simply cut the springs shorter and they wont have any preload and will have the same amount of travel as they were when they were normal length, so you've got loads of spring travel at the bottom of the dampers physical limits, its going to kill it pretty quick.

i'm not talking about 1 or 2 coils, its when people literally cut the spring in half.

also if you hadn't noticed lowered/ aftermarket dampers have shorter pistons, for less travel. so when they are bottoming out physically, the internals arent anywhere near the bottom. funny how they thought of that.

Theoretically making sense there, but in practice that's frankly bollocks.

It's impossible to bottom-out a damper on any Polo i've worked on. The thread at the top of the piston travels down to the seal, which sits just below the surface of the body of the damper. In addition, there's the extra height of the retaining cup on '74-94 models, and the damper behaves the same in that area as any other part of it's range. Once fitted to the car it can't over compress because the damper will hit the bump-stop just the same whatever the spring. Some cut down the bump stops but anything is better than nothing.

If bump stops aren't fitted at all (not clever), then if the damper does bottom out, well damage to the damper will be the last of your worries - the windscreen will go before the dampers do, because the body of the damper will hit the spring cup top mount before the piston is hammered too hard into the damper. A bit like the keys on a computer keyboard - no matter how hard you hit them, they won't damage the contacts because the plastic body of the key/button hits the casing of the keyboard first.

For models after '94 without a bump-stop fitted i don't know for absolute if the same is the case or if the damper piston could just bottom-out at full close, but it'd be so close a 5mm nylon ring would be enough to ensure it can't. I think the damper body would hit the top mount before the piston touches down, i'm just being careful. And anyway, if you're bottoming-out then you're going to know about it! And you'll be ensuring it doesn't happen again, because it makes one hell of a bang!

Shortened dampers are designed to give clearance for full bump-stops even when the car is very low, and mainly to hold a shorter spring with preload. We're talking lower/shorter than a factory spring can be safely cut for a factory damper. After all, factory springs can be cut even shorter for use with shortened/uprated dampers.

So with standard dampers your limit is around 40mm depending on model, shortened dampers will allow you to chop more off dependant on how much closer the spring cups are.

We don't all need this level of suspension ability in the clips below, but it's nice to know, so when we run them at 4mph over a speed ramp with a coil removed, we're not giving them too much of a challenge..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKtff0TlQ5E

how was what i said stupid atall? standard springs and shocks are designed for a certain amount of travel, limit that travel and your asking for trouble.

when you load up a car the spring loads and gets stiffer, therefore limiting the travel. simply cut the springs shorter and they wont have any preload and will have the same amount of travel as they were when they were normal length, so you've got loads of spring travel at the bottom of the dampers physical limits, its going to kill it pretty quick.

i'm not talking about 1 or 2 coils, its when people literally cut the spring in half.

also if you hadn't noticed lowered/ aftermarket dampers have shorter pistons, for less travel. so when they are bottoming out physically, the internals arent anywhere near the bottom. funny how they thought of that.

Theoretically making sense there, but in practice that's frankly bollocks.

It's impossible to bottom-out a damper on any Polo i've worked on. The thread at the top of the piston travels down to the seal, which sits just below the surface of the body of the damper. In addition, there's the extra height of the retaining cup on '74-94 models, and the damper behaves the same in that area as any other part of it's range. Once fitted to the car it can't over compress because the damper will hit the bump-stop just the same whatever the spring. Some cut down the bump stops but anything is better than nothing.

If bump stops aren't fitted at all (not clever), then if the damper does bottom out, well damage to the damper will be the last of your worries - the windscreen will go before the dampers do, because the body of the damper will hit the spring cup top mount before the piston is hammered too hard into the damper. A bit like the keys on a computer keyboard - no matter how hard you hit them, they won't damage the contacts because the plastic body of the key/button hits the casing of the keyboard first.

For models after '94 without a bump-stop fitted i don't know for absolute if the same is the case or if the damper piston could just bottom-out at full close, but it'd be so close a 5mm nylon ring would be enough to ensure it can't. I think the damper body would hit the top mount before the piston touches down, i'm just being careful. And anyway, if you're bottoming-out then you're going to know about it! And you'll be ensuring it doesn't happen again, because it makes one hell of a bang!

Shortened dampers are designed to give clearance for full bump-stops even when the car is very low, and mainly to hold a shorter spring with preload. We're talking lower/shorter than a factory spring can be safely cut for a factory damper. After all, factory springs can be cut even shorter for use with shortened/uprated dampers.

So with standard dampers your limit is around 40mm depending on model, shortened dampers will allow you to chop more off dependant on how much closer the spring cups are.

We don't all need this level of suspension ability in the clips below, but it's nice to know, so when we run them at 4mph over a speed ramp with a coil removed, we're not giving them too much of a challenge..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKtff0TlQ5E

They really enjoyed the drop from the ceiling ads didn't they

Lol yeah - They even acknowledged it by the mid '90s..

Only to get a bit carried away with the concept..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxE2-NpvTvs

I notice they were a little more gentle with the Polo in the '80s though!

Thanks guys, a lot of useful info on here, and a fair bit of funny shhizz too.

So, if you did cut the spring, say 1 or maybe 2 coils off, you could in theeory still use the factory dampers, and as long as your not offroading ( like in the first clip ) or loading it with a bunch of fat bastards or...an elephant etc you should be okay? For a little while a least? .

I guess in my mind, i thought that maybe let's say, if you got different wheels, and didn't fancy forking out for coilovers, and wanted normal fixed spring but didn't know how low you wanted to go. Then I guess in this case that cutting a little off and testing it over a while, this way you haven't spent a large amount on shortened springs and not liked, or maybe you liked them, and in this case you can go for new springs and dampers.

It's good to read the mixed veiws, as this will let others who are in the same boat judge for themselves.

I think I will be having a go with this idea over the weekwend, as I've got a ser of old struts, that are only going to get binned, so why not have a go...at the very least, a get to make some sprarks and cut sh*t up