Stance help?

[Tepper]

Here's how my 205 sits at the moment:
im1.shutterfly.com/media/47a1df10b3127ccefc6b35a0a43b00000030O00EbMXLJm5cMwe3nwA/cC/f%3D0/ps%3D50/r%3D0/rx%3D550/ry%3D400/

And my questions are these:
-What sort of drop should I be looking at to give it a meaner stance without making speed bumps difficult?
-Would having slightly lower profile tyres on the front affect how the car looks? 175/65 R14 on the back, 185/60 on the front.
-Any tips from anyone who's lowered one of these?

Cheers
Will

[rmad]

If it's really stance you want, not handling then what you're asking is similar to the question 'what chocolate can I eat without getting fat?'. Stance and avoiding speedramps go hand in hand.

[Tepper]

Hmmm, before I make more of a fool of myself can someone define stance? Is it just how the car 'sits' or is there more to it than that? Love that cressida btw

[CIH]

Ride-height and, for me, wheel geometry. Or camber at least.

[Deleted]

Stance means different things to different people.

So, this is my opinion and understanding of Stance, nothing more. For me, stance is getting a specific set of things right: arch to wheel size matched perfectly, a small amount of arch gap evenly all round or wheels that fit so snugly there appears to be no arch gap. The wheels must not sit higher than the arches at the front ideally, but can be cropped at the rear. Additionally, sill to floor height needs to be suitably aesthetically pleasing and this differs from car to car due to styling and proportion.

For example, this Beetle is too low.


This Honda is too high.


But this Z car is just right.


I've also heard folk say that stance is how low a car can be, but I disagree with that, lowness is a different animal altogether to stance.

[Robinxr4i]

-What sort of drop should I be looking at to give it a meaner stance without making speed bumps difficult?

A drop of 2" all round wouldn't be excessive (you WILL need to go much slower over speed bumps, but it shouldn't ground out...........)

-Would having slightly lower profile tyres on the front affect how the car looks? 175/65 R14 on the back, 185/60 on the front.

Give it a go, but I'm pretty sure the trained eye will notice even if Joe Bloggs doesn't.

-Any tips from anyone who's lowered one of these?

From personal experience of the front suspension, the spring cups don't have lips so if your going to cut the springs you might need to fabricate some kind of tabs to hold the spring in or just get some lowering springs.

The rear is torsion bar (never adjusted one myself, but) it's free to lower if you have mechanical skills, a slide hammer and plenty of time.

[stealthstylz]

A 185/60 14 tyre is only 5mm shorter overall than a 175/65 14 tyre so you'll not notice a difference in height, but depending on the makes of tyre it might look daft with wider front tyres than rears.

I reckon you need at least an 80mm drop all round to get that to look right the front arch gap looks huge.

Get it to sit like this and you win



Matt

[Deleted]

stealthstylz: That's what we're talking about, those are some very tasty wheels.

[Copey]

175/65 and 185/60 would be pretty much the same really, you would need 50 profile to make a noticable difference, even then it wouldnt be a lot

[Dez]

the problem with the term 'stance' is its been made fashionable by the scene kids in their cliques, just like dish, stretch, sticker bombing, and various other terms. i honestly think half the people using it don't understand what it means.

for starters, there isnt just one type of 'stance'. loosely speaking, a stance is what gives a car the look that it is for a certain purpose or to evoke a certain style.

secondly, ride height has little to do with stance. granted the car will generally need to be lowered(or raised) but you see a lot of people saying theyve 'stanced' their car when what they mean is theyve lowered it 2" and maybe fitted some mediocre alloys.

stance is as much about wheel size, diameter, width, design, offset, and most crucially tyre choice as anything else. its not so much how the wheel sits in the arch, but where it sits, and how the tyre bridges the gap between wheel and body.


pics to illustrate my ramblings will be along shortly......

[retrowagen1234]

I hate the word stance now.


If you read any old magazines , Stance just defined the way the car sat. I.e nose down stance.

Now its some sceney way of describing how the wheels sit in relation to the arches, If you can cram a fagpacket under the crossmember, And how your IPHONE looks in the wheel rim.

[retrowagen1234]

[curlie467]

Absolutely, there is a lot more to it than just lowering.
For me, in simple terms `stance` is just the way the car sits hence you can have a poor stance, aggressive stance etc etc.
With yours i would lower the front right down, say 60mm and see how it looks then lower the back accordingly, a little bit nose down tends to suit a 205. I think the torsion bar system is roughly 25mm per spline, i could be completely wrong though!!

[rmad]

Realistically...any car has a stance...it could be a low stance, a purposeful stance or even a stock stance. Perhaps we should be asking what type of stance you'd want, or rather, that we could have example of things that you think have a 'mean' stance.

[Tepper]

Thanks for your help so far everyone
Just to clear it up, the car already has the differently sized tyres on it, they were the ones that came with the alloys.
As stealthstylz mentioned, the front arch gap is one of my main concerns. Will lowering address this, or do I need to change the tyres to better fill the arches? Or both?
The look I'm going for is fairly conservative, in that I don't really want the back much higher than the front, and I'm not looking to play around with camber or anything like that. Basically I want to fill the arches and have the car sit a bit lower to the ground.
I quite like this:

[stealthstylz]

I'd go for smaller tyres all round, 175/60 or 185/55 would look nice.

[Tepper]

Even though the rims on mine are 14" rather than (I think) 15" in that picture?