Sounds good. I know some folks lowered their cars vipers with eibach pro kit springs. From what I hear, they lower it about an inch but if you bottom out you can bust a shock.
That's a good point to be aware of. Typically in vehicle design, full jounce (bottoming out) is expected. There are several designs which limit suspension travel. There can be rubber bumpers mounted on the chassis, in which control arm contact at the bumper limits travel, or such as a straight axle tube contact on rwd cars or trucks. There can an external bumper on the shock / damper shaft, such as on conventional Macpherson struts on in coil over shocks. There can also be an internal bump stop inside the damper, in a strut or coil over damper. On an OEM car, full jounce in the design is always accomodated, it must survive full travel, and for bumpers mounted on the chassis, they are designed to steel to steel contact, just in case in the future the rubber bumper deteriorates. There is a bump stop to avoid the shock from bottoming out in any OEM suspension design.
Point of this babbling is that if you change a spring on a coilover with an internal bump stop, something to be aware of is the full compressed height of the spring. If you bottom out and the replacement coil spring fully collapses before hitting the bump stop, that'll do some damage. Likewise, installing a damper without a bump stop in which the stock one had one, and the shock can then bottom out internally causing damage. A bump stop can be added onto to the external damper shaft as a fix. Many, many times the aftermarket companies do not validate their product mounted in the vehicle, and endure all the lengthy OEM type of testing. They just don't have the resources, they make changes based on failures which the customer encountered. Funniest one was an aftermarket company which sold a heavy sway bar, I think it was for a Honda. So sure enough, after some track time, customers were finding their sway bar mounts literally tore off the frame. It's aways a risk buying aftermarket parts since they don't fully test them, only thing you can do is some research to determine if others experienced any problems. I work in the OEM world, we don't sell parts to the public, we need to comply to full range of the OEM vehicle tests / validation / standards before any of our products are production approved.. Just be sure before mixing and matching aftermarket and OEM parts that it's a reliable setup. The race world can be different, it not necessary to design to full jounce, the setup is usually so stiff, and the vehicle won't typically encounter *** holes, various loading, liabilities, etc.. as found on the street. Another point that a purely race intended part may not be ideal for street use, why you usually see a sticker or fine print: for off road use only, to cover their butts regarding liabilities.
That's the great thing about forums such as the VCA site, easy enough to find out if anyone experienced problems before you make a purchase. Sorry for the lengthy babbling reply.. Good luck.
(it's too nice to let go)
