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NightmareMoon

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A real CO kit is adjustable like Vorschlag's MCS shock combo or Cortex JRi or JRZ. You will be in the $5k zone. Penskes from the famous guy I forget his name is $10k. Ridetech is OK for street maybe Auto-x but not really for racing. I do not know a single person racing on Ridetechs. Ridetech has the best out of the box rear shock mounts to support the thin metal. There is no data regarding the consistency of valving over a race distance like the real CO's like MCS etc.. Real shocks can also be revalved in the aftermarket by any rebuilder. Ridetechs are so much cheaper than the others and that's where they shine. If they could offer race winning performance at 25% the price everyone would be racing on them.

If you bottom shocks you will rip this metal. BMR has the best new rear shock mount which adds support to the thin metal. If I was doing street performance and wanted to control the ride height I would go with Ground Control. They have the best and cheapest system using standard spring location with adjustable perch. There could be others like MM?
I hear the Penskes are amazing...
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1emglenn

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Thanks for the information. I just checked out Ground Control and it looks good. My only hesitation about them is that the springs are linear and not progressive. Put linear on my 16 and it performed well on the track but driving it on the open road was sometimes quite jarring. Jarring enough that sometimes I had a hard time keeping my feet on the pedals.
 

shogun32

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Put linear on my 16 and it performed well on the track but driving it on the open road was sometimes quite jarring. Jarring enough that sometimes I had a hard time keeping my feet on the pedals
and exactly how much were you lowered and what rates were you running? 200/800 and lowered less than 1" and bump stops cut WAY back drives fantastic. Bump stops are not part of the suspension and should never be used as such. They are travel limiters. Short of hitting curbs with gusto at the track you should never be touching them.
 

Norm Peterson

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I have only one thing to say. If you make a product that states that it can be dropped 3 inches front and back; you would think that it would have been engineered so that it would still be drivable, no matter how far you lowered it within those limits.
Any mod that sounds significantly more extreme than other generally similar mods should immediately raise a red warning flag to dig into specifics with an understanding of the tech involved.

Here, just because a kit may physically permit 3" lowering isn't nearly enough reason for actually lowering the car that much. I'd be surprised if the S550 suspension has as much as 4" of bump travel from stock ride height, and you're talking about throwing away 3/4 of that. 1" total bump travel is going to ride like crap on real roads no matter what else you do with the suspension.

AM is not likely to post many unsatisfied reviews. They have a good idea who their target customer is and that he's not likely to understand the tech involved in any real depth.


Here's what I see when I read just a little deeper into it:
There is too much emphasis on lowering in the aftermarket, and way too much belief on the part of buyers that "if some's good, more's gotta be better . . . all the way to too much is just enough". If you want the suspension to actually work right, worry about making it work right more than about what the car will look like as a car show exhibit.


Norm
 
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Norm Peterson

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Thanks for the information. I just checked out Ground Control and it looks good. My only hesitation about them is that the springs are linear and not progressive. Put linear on my 16 and it performed well on the track but driving it on the open road was sometimes quite jarring. Jarring enough that sometimes I had a hard time keeping my feet on the pedals.
What kind of track?

That much 'jarring' sounds more like a damping issue than any fault associated with linear springs.


FWIW, springs that provide wheel rates similar to the GT350 and GT350R are not bad in street driving unless you've got adjustable dampers cranked up to track settings. I'm talking linear rate springs here, or at least linear over the whole amount of bump travel and significantly into the rebound travel.


Norm
 

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1emglenn

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You are right I am not a techie. I read up on it enough so that I might make a good decision. I just like to drive. Drive hard and push it to its limits. The tracks I use here in California are the AutoClub Speedway (road track) and the Chuckwalla at Desert Center. Like Chuckwalla a little better because its out there in the desert and not surrounded by a huge stadium like ACS. No walls to slam into to.
 

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I just like to drive. Drive hard and push it to its limits. The tracks I use here in California are the AutoClub Speedway (road track) and the Chuckwalla
then you don't want more than 1" drop and you want any of the 3 known good and well established options. If you just gotta have coilovers you can buy Steeda's pro-Action adjustable in that config and put 275lb/in springs on it. Well since they are standard 2.5" springs you can put whatever rate you want up to the point you overwhelm the damping.
 

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It is a coil over kit. It comes with supposedly matched front struts and rear shocks. They are supposed to be designed so that what has happened would never happen.

The old lowering springs were from Ford Peformance. Don't have anything against them as far as how the car handled, just wanted to drop the rear more than they allowed.

While I don't disagree with you. The average 16 year old is happy riding on the bump stops because it "looks cool". So many coil overs allow you to set them too low to suit that market.

Physics doesn't change. You can't lower a car a ton without screwing up the suspension geometry and riding on bump stops. Unless you also replace the ball joints, suspension arms, etc.
 

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Norm Peterson

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I just like to drive. Drive hard and push it to its limits. The tracks I use here in California are the AutoClub Speedway (road track) and the Chuckwalla at Desert Center. Like Chuckwalla a little better because its out there in the desert and not surrounded by a huge stadium like ACS. No walls to slam into to.
For what is apparently a dual-purpose street/occasional track car, I wish people (in general, not just you) would take a big step back from focusing on making their cars lower just to make them look like a race car. When it's the suspension function rather than the appearance it provides that makes a race car a fast race car.

Yes, the CG drops when you lower the car, yes the amount of lateral load transfer is reduced, and yes you gain a little grip. But you don't gain as much grip as the visual amount of lowering suggests should be happening, and that's before considering any of the adverse effects of that lowering. Like the front geometric roll center dropping faster than the CG does, or the suspension operating in a region of poorer camber recovery, let alone the matter of bumpstop contact.

With good street tires fully warmed up at the track (but not to the point of being overheated, or completely heat-cycled out), over 1.1g should be readily possible on OE springs, if perhaps with a bit more roll resistance via firmer sta-bars, better dampers, a bit more front camber, and a wheel/tire package closer to PP2 than base. Even an S197 can hit g-numbers that high with only that much work.


You are right I am not a techie. I read up on it enough so that I might make a good decision.
I'm not sure where to take this except to suggest that the stronger of an engineering outlook you inherently have, the better your decisions in matters like this tend to be. No guarantee, but the percentages would make it a better bet. My opinion as a 73 y/o retired engineer.


Norm
 

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Thanks Norm, I will cut back on the severity of lowering the car and concentrate more on creating a tighter handling package. After all one should listen to their elders, since I am only a 72 y/o.
 

Norm Peterson

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Thanks Norm, I will cut back on the severity of lowering the car and concentrate more on creating a tighter handling package. After all one should listen to their elders, since I am only a 72 y/o.
I think as far as suitability for street and track is concerned, we're really aiming for about the same compromise point. The difference is in the direction we're coming from. You might say I got 'corrupted' into looking at car stuff from a technical perspective rather than falling in lock-step with the usual appearance conventions and "everybody knows . . ." pretty early on (I'm thinking 1962-ish).


FWIW, I've also had to "undo" a case of too much lowering, where the actual drop ended up being close to an inch more than claimed, which was itself borderline too much.


On edit, I was aware that you weren't one of the 40-something 'kids' (or a 16 y/o either) from one of your other posts that I'd seen.


Norm
 
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bnightstar

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With good street tires fully warmed up at the track (but not to the point of being overheated, or completely heat-cycled out), over 1.1g should be readily possible on OE springs, if perhaps with a bit more roll resistance via firmer sta-bars, better dampers, a bit more front camber, and a wheel/tire package closer to PP2 than base. Even an S197 can hit g-numbers that high with only that much work.
In September of 2019 I did a spirited drive on a mountain pass with a group of friends with the Stock PZero's and stock car. There was an S band of a left/right corners and I entered it at around 100 km/h and when the car transitioned to the right corner and I put the pedal down I got hit by the G force so hard I blacked out for a few seconds (was hefty 260 lbs back then) when after that I checked the car G meter it showed that I hit 1.5G.

So sure you can do that with the stock suspension but the question remain is it better. The Mustang is under-sprung from factory obviously as you can see from the GT350/R and even that is a bit more daily than a real American Iron race car. It's a heavy car and physics are physics after all. Overall I think that more than 1.5 inch drop is obviously not for cornering but purely for looks.
 

Norm Peterson

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In September of 2019 I did a spirited drive on a mountain pass with a group of friends with the Stock PZero's and stock car. There was an S band of a left/right corners and I entered it at around 100 km/h and when the car transitioned to the right corner and I put the pedal down I got hit by the G force so hard I blacked out for a few seconds (was hefty 260 lbs back then) when after that I checked the car G meter it showed that I hit 1.5G.
There's a couple of caveats to be aware of.

First, the effects of pavement slope in either the lateral (road camber) or longitudinal (upslope/downslope) direction will affect the measured g's. Banked corners and entering an upslope can somewhat artificially add grip due to inertial effects that aren't present in a flat, level corner.

And secondly, there's peak g's and there's sustained g's. I've got datalog numbers that have spiked as high as 1.34 or so, but 1.1 is a more representative number over the distance through the corner. This is at NJMP, which has two courses that for the most part are fairly flat.


I'd be concerned medically if 1.5g lateral alone was enough to cause only a physiological "brown-out". Though it does imply some vertical g's were at play as well, which would exaggerate the lateral g number beyond pure mechanical grip.


Norm
 

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I'd be concerned medically if 1.5g lateral alone was enough to cause only a physiological "brown-out". Though it does imply some vertical g's were at play as well, which would exaggerate the lateral g number beyond pure mechanical grip.


Norm
Which is why I dropped my weight down to 194 lbs. And I'm much better now in such situation. True the turns were banked but still it's a lot for the stock PZero's and this was after a season of driving on them. So this tires are durable.
My point was that even though the stock PP suspension is ok there is not enough spring rate in it. So better Shocks/Springs are required.
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