lowering

[Eric Seppanen]

On Tue, Oct 15, 2002 at 11:31:41AM -0500, Brian Cembor wrote:
> I was watching Monster Garage last night and they did something to the
> Exploder that made me wonder...
> They lowered the truck by heating the springs. What does this do to the
> spring and is at a "safe" way to lower a spring.

It's bad news.  Nobody does this other than fly-by-night crooks.

I've heard of this being done; it's bad because:
- heating will change the "springiness" of the steel, in ways that you
can't predict.  So you end up with goofy changing spring rates as well as
a spring that may later crack or otherwise fail.  You might also end up
with a spring that goes slack under full extension and falls off the
perch.
- it's impossible to do evenly all the way around so some of the coils
will bulge sideways, and possibly jump off the spring perch under load.
- since you're doing it on the car, you're probably heating other stuff,
like the strut (do you want to be 2 feet from an exploding strut?),
bushings, etc., ruining all those parts as well.

Heating springs goes in the same category as leaf blower forced induction
and disconnecting wastegates.