Suspension Springs

The spring is the component doing the most fundamental work in your suspension. It carries the weight, sets the ride height, and decides how much the body moves every time you turn, brake or hit something. Everything else you bolt on is managing what the spring allows.

This range covers coil springs in both lowered and raised applications, leaf spring components for load carrying vehicles, and the spring saddles that locate it all.

Lowering: What It Actually Buys You

Dropping the car is where most people start, and it delivers more than the stance it is usually bought for.

Lowering the body lowers the centre of gravity, which means less weight transfer every time the car changes direction or speed. Less transfer means less body roll before the anti roll bars are even involved, less dive under brakes and less squat under power. The car stays flatter, the tyres stay loaded more evenly, and that is where the extra grip comes from.

Higher rate springs add to it by resisting the movement itself. The body settles faster after an input and the car feels immediate through the steering rather than delayed.

Our lowering kits are developed and manufactured in Europe, supplied as a full set of four springs, with drops ranging from around 10mm to 40mm depending on the platform. Front and rear rates are specified separately and stated on every listing in both kg/mm and lb/in, because the numbers matter and you should be able to see them before you buy.

What lowering also does is move your suspension geometry. The arms swing through a different part of their arc, camber goes negative and toe follows, and plenty of platforms end up outside specification with nothing worn at all. Budget for the camber and caster correction alongside the springs, because that is the difference between a car that grips and one that quietly destroys the inside edge of a good set of tyres.

How Low Is Too Low

More drop is not more performance, and past a point it works against you.

Every millimetre you lower is a millimetre of bump travel you no longer have. Run out of travel and the suspension meets the bump stops, which is not damping, it is a collision. The tyre skips, the car unsettles mid corner, and you lose the grip you were chasing. Over a genuinely bumpy road a sensibly lowered car is quicker than an aggressively lowered one every time.

Then there is daily life. Driveways, speed humps and kerbs all become something you think about, and the lower you sit the more attention they take.

Worth checking the requirements where your vehicle is registered as well, since rules often set a minimum ground clearance and a drop that puts you under it is an inspection problem no matter how good it looks. Confirm before committing to a big drop.

Rate Matters More Than Drop

This is what separates a car that works from one that just sits low.

Spring rate is the force required to compress the spring, and it governs how the car responds to everything. Too soft and the body still rolls and pitches despite the lower ride height, and you will bottom out on travel you no longer have. Too firm and the tyre cannot follow the road surface, so it skips over mid corner bumps instead of staying planted, and a tyre in the air generates no grip at all.

Our springs use a progressive rate design, which means they start softer and firm up as they compress. That gives reasonable compliance over small inputs while still supporting the car when it is loaded up in a corner, which is what makes a lowered car liveable on a road that is not a racetrack.

The rates are also chosen to work with the dampers you are likely to have. These are engineered for balance with both OEM and aftermarket shocks rather than assuming you have already replaced everything.

Raised Coil Springs

Not everything in the coil range goes down.

Raised coil springs lift ride height instead, which buys ground clearance and the guard clearance to run larger wheels and tyres. They are the answer for a van or wagon that needs to sit higher and carry more without moving to a full lift kit.

The engineering problem at this end is load. A spring stiff enough to hold height with weight in the back is usually too stiff when the vehicle is empty, which is why the rear springs in these kits use a progressive rate that starts firm and softens as it compresses into its working range. You get the support when it is loaded and a ride that is still civilised when it is not.

Leaf Spring Components and Spring Saddles

For leaf sprung pick-ups and 4WDs, the springs themselves usually outlast everything holding them in place.

The bushings at the spring eye and shackle are what let the pack pivot and change length as it works, and they are what fails. Once they perish, the axle moves around under the vehicle and the back end goes vague and unsettled in a way an alignment will never explain. Our leaf spring kits pair polyurethane bushings with greaseable shackles and pins, so the bushing can be relubricated from a grease gun rather than drying out and wearing through, which matters enormously on anything seeing dust, mud or water.

U-bolts sit alongside them in a range of inside widths, lengths and thread sizes, in round and square top designs. These are a consumable rather than a reusable part, because a U-bolt develops its clamping force by stretching as it is torqued and will not generate the same clamp a second time. Any time the pack comes off the axle, they get replaced.

Spring saddles complete the set, locating and supporting a coil spring in its seat so it is correctly positioned and loading evenly rather than sitting slightly off and wearing where it should not.

Your Shocks Will Notice

Be straight with yourself about this before ordering.

Factory dampers are valved for factory spring rates and factory travel. Fit a shorter, stiffer spring and the shock is working faster over a shorter stroke against a rate it was never matched to. It will control the spring less well and wear out sooner.

The symptoms are recognisable. The car feels bouncy or floaty despite being stiffer, it needs more than one movement to settle after a bump, and it never quite feels resolved no matter what else you change.

If the shocks are already tired, do them at the same time. If they are healthy and the drop is mild, you will get away with it for a while, but plan for it. Springs and damping are a pair.

Fitting and Settling

Springs demand respect. A compressed coil stores a serious amount of energy and a compressor slipping is genuinely dangerous, so if you are not properly equipped this is the job for a workshop.

Check your bump stops while things are apart. On a lowered car they are doing more work than the factory intended, and the right stop is part of doing the job properly rather than an optional extra.

Torque every suspension bushing with the car on its wheels at ride height rather than hanging on the hoist, since a bushing clamped at full droop sits preloaded and binds from the first kilometre.

On leaf spring work, fit new U-bolts and torque them in stages in a cross pattern with the vehicle at ride height, then recheck after a few hundred kilometres.

Get a wheel alignment straight after any coil spring change, because ride height moves camber and toe the moment the car settles. Then drive it for a few hundred kilometres and have the alignment rechecked, since new springs bed in slightly and the numbers set on day one will have shifted.

Find Springs for Your Vehicle

Springs work hand in hand with the rest of the suspension parts range, from anti roll bars to bushes.

Select your vehicle to see the coil springs, leaf spring components and saddles available for it, and check each listing for the drop or lift height and the front and rear spring rates. Every Whiteline component is backed by our warranty, a fitment guarantee and 30 day returns.