Before everyone crawls up my ***, my brother is a auto body techer and for his real life application project thing hes going to compare my brand new set of TEIN coilovers to cutting your springs in an attempt to convince the good old boys from PR in his class that cutting your springs on your civic does not achieve the same effect as buying a quality set of lowering springs. Anyway to drop my fc how many coils would have to cut so that the car would have the same ride height as a set of TEIN s-type springs? I read that for every coil you cut off it lowers the car 1/4in., If so that means I would have to cut 6 coils off of my old springs, to achieve the same look is there anything im over looking?

 

There's only about 6 coils total to your springs.

It depends on where you cut them.... I would cut about 3/4 of a coil off and then reshape the ends with acetylene.

 

i cut a full coil out of a set of sec gen turbo front springs on a conversion i'm doing on my first gen and it droped it by 3 full inches and gave the shocks only one inch of travel till they bottom out he should just tell his class to spend the money for new engineered and tested springs

 

his class is all ricans, its nuts seeing their civics with the lawn edgeing body kits and ****

 

First problem is that you are going to lose a lot of spring free height as you cut off whole coils. Look at the spring on the bench and see how much height you will lose when you cut one coil, If its the first coil,well that one is a dead coil anyway. Remember that you have to remake that dead section for the spring to hit the perch right so look at the distances between the live coils. That is how far you are lowering the car with one coil cut out. Plus a little for compression(which will be less than stock because the spring is stiffer) Now lets say you have to cut 1 1/2 coils out to get the spring rate to match the TEIN's. Don't know if thats what it is just for example here. So now the car has dropped and you have the same spring rates.
Now the problems start, you have just run out suspension travel and are all over the bump stops. One at stock ride height will drive circles around either car the TEIN car or the cut spring car if they are that low.
Now the fix. IF you can get the ride height up off the bump stops with either car then you can compare. With the TEIN's its easy, adjust the spring perch up and your done. With the cut springs not so easy, you need to make spacers for the end of the springs to make their free height taller.
These hunks of metal we call springs don't care what color they are or what brand name is painted on them. Springs come in all shapes and sizes and many different shapes can be made with the same spring rate.

Either car will handle and ride like crap if it is as low as they probably want

The coil overs will just be easier to adjust.

(And the shocks themselves will be a big improvement over stock)