johnymd
Club Member
Been a bit quite on here so I thought I'd start another thread about current options for lowering your S30. It's already been discussed but if we all just read old threads there would be nothing new on here.
From talking to the new owners of the zeds I've sold, the first thing I'm asked by every single one of them is how do I lower the car but not spend a fortune? One also said he loves 240's but doesn't like the 4x4 look that they have as standard. Most would like to lower the car a little but still retain a bit of comfort and the majority are lower for aesthetics and not so it goes round a track quicker. After all, the majority of these cars are only used on the road. The people using them on the track would generally go for a setup from GAZ, T3, AZ ect. So whats the alternative if you just want to improve the look?
1. Lowering springs - MJP sells them as do eibach amongst others. These will probably cost you around £200 and may lower the car a bit. In my experience they can be a bit hit and miss with how much they lower it. If you want to be able to set the ride height then this just wont work. Unless you use them and trim a bit at a time off the spring to get it as you want. You could also just cut down your old springs and this has been the common method for years. I've done it in the past and would probably do it in the future but you have to be careful not to take too much off and find the spring is loose when you jack the car up. This will also stiffen the suspension base on the percentage of spring you remove. From my experience you could take a coil out of the front and half a coil from the back and this would lower the car just about right. If you look at my old rad 240 in my gallery, that's what I did to this car back in the late 80's and was pretty happy with it. This will only work on a UK car though and the US cars will require too much to be removed to get the front low enough. The backs have often sagged enough at the back to look correct so generally only the front needs doing IMO. You could heat up the coils with a torch and let the spings deform to get a lower ride height. Please note - I am not recommending modding your springs as above but just pointing out what could be done.
2. Adjustable spring platforms - Often called coilovers but zeds have coil over shock from the factory so could be misleading. The strut would normally be sectioned at the same time but if your only lowering it an inch or 2 then you could just remove the lower spring perch and weld on the threaded tubes. A very easy mod and will cost you about £200 plus modding the strut. If you need to pay someone to modify your struts then this could be another £200. If you need to change the dampers as well and go for adjustable then there's another £600 so you may as well go for a complete coilover kit.
3. Coilover kit - May be overkill for the road but you as you can see from option 2, it could work out cheaper or the same sort of money to go this route.
GAZ - I use these and you just send them your strut and they custom build you just what you want. You can have fully adjustable or fixed damping. Adjustable is nice as you can wind it down for comfort and if in the future you want to get out on a track you can ramp up the damping to suit. The prices have gone up by 20% since I bought mine so they are around £1250 for adjustable damping. The fixed damping is a few hundred less so probably around £820. T3/AZ/BC - Never uses any of these but I'm guessing you will be hard pushed to tell the difference if they all had the same spring rate/damping setting. BC is the cheapest at £875 so that's probable the one I'd go for. Really easy to fit as you just cut your strut tubes off and weld the supplied tubes on. T3 kit comes already assembled with their struts and you can either send in your old struts or just pay the core charge(best option) Their kit is $2000 which equates to around £2000 with shipping duty and vat. Maybe a bit over that with the current rate. AZ was always the kit of choice before T3 came along but they are more like the BC kit in that you have to fit them to your struts in the same way. Couldn't find a price for this but I guess its somewhere between BC and T3.
This is just a quick guide so please add too or correct if I'm wrong.
From talking to the new owners of the zeds I've sold, the first thing I'm asked by every single one of them is how do I lower the car but not spend a fortune? One also said he loves 240's but doesn't like the 4x4 look that they have as standard. Most would like to lower the car a little but still retain a bit of comfort and the majority are lower for aesthetics and not so it goes round a track quicker. After all, the majority of these cars are only used on the road. The people using them on the track would generally go for a setup from GAZ, T3, AZ ect. So whats the alternative if you just want to improve the look?
1. Lowering springs - MJP sells them as do eibach amongst others. These will probably cost you around £200 and may lower the car a bit. In my experience they can be a bit hit and miss with how much they lower it. If you want to be able to set the ride height then this just wont work. Unless you use them and trim a bit at a time off the spring to get it as you want. You could also just cut down your old springs and this has been the common method for years. I've done it in the past and would probably do it in the future but you have to be careful not to take too much off and find the spring is loose when you jack the car up. This will also stiffen the suspension base on the percentage of spring you remove. From my experience you could take a coil out of the front and half a coil from the back and this would lower the car just about right. If you look at my old rad 240 in my gallery, that's what I did to this car back in the late 80's and was pretty happy with it. This will only work on a UK car though and the US cars will require too much to be removed to get the front low enough. The backs have often sagged enough at the back to look correct so generally only the front needs doing IMO. You could heat up the coils with a torch and let the spings deform to get a lower ride height. Please note - I am not recommending modding your springs as above but just pointing out what could be done.
2. Adjustable spring platforms - Often called coilovers but zeds have coil over shock from the factory so could be misleading. The strut would normally be sectioned at the same time but if your only lowering it an inch or 2 then you could just remove the lower spring perch and weld on the threaded tubes. A very easy mod and will cost you about £200 plus modding the strut. If you need to pay someone to modify your struts then this could be another £200. If you need to change the dampers as well and go for adjustable then there's another £600 so you may as well go for a complete coilover kit.
3. Coilover kit - May be overkill for the road but you as you can see from option 2, it could work out cheaper or the same sort of money to go this route.
GAZ - I use these and you just send them your strut and they custom build you just what you want. You can have fully adjustable or fixed damping. Adjustable is nice as you can wind it down for comfort and if in the future you want to get out on a track you can ramp up the damping to suit. The prices have gone up by 20% since I bought mine so they are around £1250 for adjustable damping. The fixed damping is a few hundred less so probably around £820. T3/AZ/BC - Never uses any of these but I'm guessing you will be hard pushed to tell the difference if they all had the same spring rate/damping setting. BC is the cheapest at £875 so that's probable the one I'd go for. Really easy to fit as you just cut your strut tubes off and weld the supplied tubes on. T3 kit comes already assembled with their struts and you can either send in your old struts or just pay the core charge(best option) Their kit is $2000 which equates to around £2000 with shipping duty and vat. Maybe a bit over that with the current rate. AZ was always the kit of choice before T3 came along but they are more like the BC kit in that you have to fit them to your struts in the same way. Couldn't find a price for this but I guess its somewhere between BC and T3.
This is just a quick guide so please add too or correct if I'm wrong.
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