Coilover Basics
Hot rodding is a complicated, nuanced hobby, but part of its appeal is its science. Bench racing new techniques and analyzing successes and failures make it exciting. The car community is filled with us nerds trying to find our cars’ hidden, untapped potentials.
Suspension is the occasionally overlooked area that can garner huge improvements with your worn-out muscle car, and coilovers are a modern solution to vintage problems. They replace heavy springs and shocks with a package that’s easy to install, tune, and is significantly lighter. They can make drastic changes to your car’s driving characteristics.
Coilovers are a nicely packaged piece of performance goodness, but what should you consider when purchasing, how do you adjust them, and what are their differences? We break it down from a hot-rodding perspective—a degree in fluid dynamics not necessary.
What are Coilover Shocks?
Coilovers are, just as the name says, a coil spring that sits over a shock. Traditional coil springs are heavy hot-rolled metal, but coilovers feature much smaller cold-rolled springs, typically a 2.5-inch id.
“Coilovers are the most cost-effective way of lowering your car,” Aldan American owner Garrett Harmola says. Fine-tuning ride height is arguably the most helpful feature of coilovers.
“The stance can be perfect. When you have the spring mounted on the shock, you can start to adjust up and down within reason,” AFCO national accounts manager Eric Saffell says. Excluding some McPherson-style
