Having my coilovers fitted on Thursday and was wondering how low I can go without problems, I have adjustable drop links too

see Stamsaas' thread in the project section.

depends what you mean by "problems"? if you drop it in the weeds it's obviously going to be more likely to ground, ditto if you're going to run the car fully loaded this will have an impact. also depends on what the roads are like and how extreme the speed bumps are in your area..

lots of post on here refer to a drop of xx (i'm guilty of it too) but it can be misleading given the factory suspension doesn't sit level in my experience plus not all cars start at the same level given vehicle age/use/factory tolerances etc. its better to measure in terms of the distance from the wheel centre upwards to the top of the wheel arch.

lowest i had my 2010 vRS was (wheel centre to arch) 325mm both front and back. i found that to be too low as it was very easy to catch the plastic undertray on speed humps even when going slowly, more so when you had passengers and kit in the boot. i raise the car from there up to a level where i was 335mm at the front and 340mm at the rear. You still need to take it easy on speed bumps but i found it would go over without scraping even with passengers and boot loads. I ran the car at that level for 70k miles.

a couple of pics:

lowest i had mine:

weitec coilovers vRS by lotus-gt, on Flickr

raised up a little (ie it was like this for 70k miles):

First clean after winter by lotus-gt, on Flickr

you also need to bear in mind that your coilovers will have a recommended operating level - go below that and you'll blitz your dampers and have a lousy ride AND you'll invalidate any warranty you have on the kit. for the weitecs i had on the 2010 car the lowest approved level was 335mm.

on my 2012 car (on bilsteins) i have not gone as low as my goal is to create the best handling octavia i can - the coilover kit is just one of a series of modifications i'm making to the chassis, so i'm less concerned with where it sits, more about the ride and handling that can be achieved - ie performance over looks.

HTH

getting s3 hubs Rob?

Excellent closing part Rob "Performance over looks" soooo many people have there cars sitting far too low i bet it handles worse than it did standard.

I'm the same as you handling over looks, although with the current state of the roads a 4X4 seems more suitable lol.

I've got mine sat at 340mm all round. This is mainly due to the fact my drive is on a slope and makes a nice crest where it meets the bloody foot path so any lower and it scrapes coming on and off the drive way. To be honest at this height it feels fine still, handles well and looks a smidge better than factory in my view.

getting s3 hubs Rob?

i did look for some but i couldn't find any at the "right" price.. if i end up replacing the bilstiens at some point in the future then the s3 hubs might be something i'd consider at the same time. no point pulling the car to bits and paying for geometry again just for 1.7kg saved, but if i was doing it anyway then maybe worthwhile.

I can only echo Rob's excellent post. It's not really a case of going for a 'definite' level of drop. It all depends on your local roads, the routes you use, what you carry in the car, as well as personal preference over aesthetics and your tolerance of having to change driving style because of your suspension height - speed over speedbumps and particularly tricky local routes are two examples I can think of.

For me, I went from a KW V1 setup to a fixed spring and 'sports' damper setup, i.e. Eibach and Koni FSD - this was because I wasn't happy with the ride quality and also I could actually go as quickly on local routes I use regularly, because the car was at risk of bottoming out. Now many others would have been quite happy with that, and prepared to put up with some of those shortcomings, because it did look quite good at that level and also on flat routes/track it did handle extremely well, noticeably better than my current Eibach/FSD setup, when you're at 10/10ths.

Therefore, there's no simple magic answer to it I'm afraid

Cheers,

Steve

Cheers guys, I'm used to having a pretty low car as I had a vw bora tdi before my occy and that was rather low! Didn't have that on coilovers but was -35mm front and 50mm rear running 18x8 bbs ch's in Matt black