[tirwin]

I was thinking about the original subject line of this post and it occurred to me that maybe we need to be a bit more precise in terminology. Maybe there are two issues here instead of one. Ride quality ('feel' or 'harshness') and handling.

They are, of course, related but I think this is a case where words can get in the way of meaning.

There are some aspects that will contribute more to feel than handling and vice-versa.

When I think of ride quality I tend to think about things that have to do with dampening the energy transfer from the road surface to the driver's seat. Those things would be things like motor/transmission mounts, trailing arm bushings, shocks, etc. If you took your existing setup and only changed to solid motor/transmission mounts and monoballs then I think you would say that the ride quality suffered. Maybe you got something out of it like the car shifts better, but the tradeoff was ride quality.

When I think of handling I tend to think about rigidity and stiffness so things like sway bars, torsion bars, strut braces, etc. These factors influence under/neutral/over-steering.

I'm saying this because my experience in working on my rear suspension was different than what I expected. I changed to polybronze bushings, 28mm torsion bars and had the Bilsteins re-valved. I expected the ride quality to suffer but I felt like the ride quality actually improved. So why did it improve? I think it was because the rear shocks were shot and I didn't realize just how bad they were. If I had ONLY replaced the rear shocks I might have been just as happy with the ride quality. But that's my point... it is very hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison and you almost have to change things one at time to isolate the impact of the change. And that is not always realistic.

My advice, if you're concerned about ride quality, would be to limit the number of changes you make at any one time. Of course, that can be hard to do if you just want to get done with a project and don't have infinite time to devote to it so just try to do things in a reasonable manner. Maybe do the rear bushings and shocks first and then change the torsion bars later. Not only will you spread out the cost but you'll develop a better sense of how the things contribute to how YOU feel the car drives, which is all that is important at the end of the day.

Back to lowering. I think the main point is that lowering is about trade-offs. When you lower the car below 'Euro' height you start to quickly hit a point of diminishing returns. You increase 'kickback' (or whatever you want to call it) in the steering and you also limit the amount of suspension travel (assuming you don't do anything to compensate for lowering by itself). Those two factors contribute to 'feel' in very direct ways. The question is really 'how much lower than Euro' can you go before you cross the cost/benefit threshold? I'm not sure I've seen a good general answer to that question. But I do know there is a huge difference in that one little inch.

I don't know if this is useful or not -- it's just how I tend to think about it.