Ride & Handling Improvements


When a car company designs a vehicle's suspension, the engineers try to provide the kind of ride and handling they think potential customers will expect. Of course, different people have different expectations and desires, and there's no reason why you have to live with a suspension that isn't tuned to suit your tastes.

Maybe every bump in the road is a shot to the kidneys and you'd like a softer, smoother ride.

Or perhaps you're in search of better handling. This could be because your vehicle bounces too much after you hit a dip, or because you and your passengers feel as if you're going to fall over every time you go around a corner.

Whatever your preference, you can fine tune your vehicle's ride and handling using the appropriate suspension kit. You can make your vehicle more comfortable and much more enjoyable to drive. And you can make it safer, because when you improve its handling, it can maneuver more quickly, which means you can drive around a potential accident, instead of slamming on the brakes and skidding into it. (For more info on how to refrain from becoming an insurance company statistic, see "How To Avoid Accidents".)

A good place to start fine tuning your suspension is with the shock absorbers (or struts). A shock swap often can improve your vehicle's ride and handling at the same time. (This is actually big news, because it wasn't so long ago that you could improve ride quality, but it meant sacrificing some handling abilities, or vice versa.) High-performance shocks, also known as dampers, literally will dampen the feel of potholes or bumpy roads. They also can reduce body roll (where the vehicle leans heavily in a corner or lane change) and will stabilize your vehicle by reducing the amount of bounce after a lane change, bump or pothole.

Shocks work together with springs to control up-and-down movement at each corner of your vehicle. You don't have to change springs when you change shocks, but you may want to switch to a matched set. Springs actually come in two flavors: coil springs and leaf springs. Regardless of design, a stiffer spring provides more control, greater load-carrying abilities and improved handling, but it also gives you a harsher ride. A softer spring pretty much does the opposite. If you'd like the best of both worlds, there is a hybrid for vehicles running coil springs: a progressive-rate spring that starts out relatively soft but gets stiffer as it is compressed.

Another way to improve your vehicle's handling is a swap to a larger set of anti-sway bars (sometimes called sway bars or stabilizer bars). Anti-sway bars will significantly reduce body roll. This is a plus, because body roll is not only uncomfortable for people in your vehicle, it also causes a couple of your tires to have less contact with the road, which reduces your ability to stop or steer. Replacing a thin factory anti-sway bar with a much beefier unit--or installing one where there had been none--will have a profound effect, making your vehicle ride much flatter through the corners. However, anti-sway bars can have an adverse affect in off-road situations (sometimes leaving one tire completely off the ground), so many people run them on the road, then disconnect them before they hit the trails.

If off-road adventures are your thing--even if the focus isn't on the driving, but rather on the hunting or fishing once you get to your destination--you'll want to consider an off-road suspension kit. Suspension upgrades can make your trips both safer and more fun.

Whether you're going to be driving off-road or on, another way you can improve ride quality and handling is to stiffen your vehicle. That's because the engine keeps trying to twist your car or truck into a pretzel. If the vehicle's body is nice and stiff, then the engine's energy gets directed toward the drive wheels, so you accelerate that much quicker. Plus, your vehicle won't develop a bunch of annoying squeaks and rattles from constantly being twisted.

Tires also can have a profound impact on a vehicle's ride quality and handling ability. Naturally, high-performance tread patterns provide better acceleration on dry pavement. And snow tires can help provide traction when the white stuff comes out of the sky. But did you know wider tires will give your vehicle a bigger footprint, which makes for quicker acceleration and better turning control, as well as shorter stopping distances? For more information on tires, see "How To Choose The Right Tires For Your Vehicle And Your Lifestyl." If you really want to go with wider tires, you'll need to upgrade to wider wheels, too.

A lowering kit also can improve your vehicle's handling abilities by lowering its center of gravity, which makes it more stable in turns. Plus, some lowering kits provide stiffer springs for enhanced cornering.

If you really want to get serious about handling, you may be able to replace your vehicle's entire rear suspension with an independent unit, like those found on such high-performance vehicles as Jaguars and Corvettes. An independent rear suspension (IRS) lets each rear wheel and tire operate independently of the other, so you can get better traction in tough conditions. It also reduces body roll, as well as your vehicle's tendency to squat down in the rear when you accelerate or lean forward when you hit the brakes. By keeping your vehicle's weight better balanced in this way, an IRS improves both ride and handling--and it provides a substantial measure of added safety.

In fact, any time you can improve your vehicle's handling you make it safer. And when you improve its ride quality, you make driving that much more enjoyable.













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Stiff Stuff
How To Avoid Accidents
How To Choose The Right Tires For Your Vehicle And Your Lifestyle
Lowering Kits
Off-Road Suspension Packages
Wheels & Tires


Glossary Terms




body roll
independent rear suspension
shock absorber
anti-sway bar
ride
tire
high-performance tire
lift kit
lowering kit
snow tire
strut
suspension
traction




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