Hellonwheels

just wondering how much of a drop you guys have put on your car, and if you have encounterd any prolbems. im looking at about a 2 inch drop on my 86

BC-X

kinda of stupid to go that low on FC's... you are going to need all of the camber adjustment plates, bars, links.
Is this coil-overs or Intrax 1.75' drop springs?

does the 2' serve a real purpose besides appearence?

coldfire

iTrader: (1)

go as low as you can without doing either of the following:
1) affecting camber to an unecessary degree
2) bottoming out your car

since the first one is more likely to happen, you don't want to lower your car more than 1 inch without some sort of camber adjustment...but other than that, lowering ride height is good and in motorsports teams try to lower the center of gravity as much as possible.

coldfire

iTrader: (1)

yes, lowering the ride height of the car will improve many aspects of the car, most of all handling and suspension dynamics. since the center of gravity is closer to the ground, you get less weight transfer and so your suspension and tires can better do their job.

Nick86

iTrader: (1)

Without going to a full coilover setup, you're going to have a hard time finding an aftermarket spring that will offer you a 2 inch drop. RB offers a 1" drop - and this is what I got. Looks and handles great. I think that the biggest drop I've seen from a standard replacement spring is 1.25".

XuperXero

Intrax does 1.75"

23Racer

Just a little suspension FYI. On my TGTC car, I have lowered it 2 1/2 inches using coilovers on modified stock struts. I welded on new lower spring perches for my coil over sleeves. Coldfire is right, when you lower an RX7 you can expect a ton of negative camber gain. This is almost okay for a racecar but the amount of compression camber gain is even too much for me.

I have had to deal with extreme camber gain in the rear (each inch of drop equals approximately 1 3/4 degrees of negative camber) by creating a rear camber subframe strut rod adjuster. Mazdaspeed, Racing Beat, Mazdatrix, ISC, etc... all sell versions of this. Being cheap I made mine myself with 2 rod ends, a threaded aluminum hexagonal tube and some spacers. It works fine.

On the front I run camber plates, but at times I am still negative camber limited for some tracks (max I can get without modifying the strut towers is around 5 degrees. I use Toyo RA1's and they work their best between 2 and 5 degrees negative. The benefit of struts is that you get minimal to little camber gain through the swing of the lower control arm with the locked in upper mount.

The actual area of concern with extremely lowered RX7's is bump steer issues. When you lower the car the geometry between the control arms and the front tie rods (steering rack) and the rear swing arms and the locating links goes all out of whack. This is the issue that I am dealing with now. We may need to move the rack up in the front a couple of inches to minimize bump steer and the twitchiness that comes from that. A racing sledgehammer solution is to run extremely hard springs that minimize suspension travel and bumpsteer, but for the street it wouldn't be fun.

This has been an extremely long winded way of saying that if you want your street car to handle well, nimble and precise, have your tires live more than 5,000 kms, not pound your teeth out, etc,... stay within an inch of stock ride height. On a race car we can go much lower with tons of other mods and compromises. Most people would be unwilling to have this compromise on a daily basis.

This has been a message from the "Old Fart Anti-Street Cool" Department.