I have had my eclipse for about 3 months now. I bought it used and it has brand new tires on it. They suck though. They are BF Goodwrinches(did I spell that right?) anyways I wont even give it a lot of gas and my tires will sqeak. Its really annoying. I can even accelarate from a complete spot around a corner with out my tires sqeaking. Its worse with rain though, so I am thinking about getting new tires and rims before the rest of my performance mods since thats what keeps me attached to the road. Eventually I am going to lower my eclipse one inch. I want to get 17s. Would they fit? I am a complete newb to making cars fast and nice. So any advice would be helpful for tires and suspension/handling products. Thanks guys and girls

 

I have a 98 eclipse spyder and have 18" wheels and I originally lowered it a inch, but I had a bad time with scraping the bottom bumper. Even at stock height, I still scrape the bumper leaving steep driveways. I have Tokico struts for my car which are pretty nice. I should have gotten the Illumina's which are the adjustable to set sensitivity. I don't reccomend lowering the car unless you are just going to be using it for show or for racing. For practical street use I have to say no, but that's just my preference.

 

17" wheels and a 1"-1.5" drop are about perfect for a 2g eclipse. Just make sure to get a good lowering kit. Companies like Eibach and Sprint make pretty good springs for our cars, and FatalJRA gave some of the best choices for shocks. Remember though, if you drive a Spyder, get the AWD springs. As for lowering the car for the street, you can get good results if you fine tune the suspension and maybe even corner balance everything. Of course, if you don't have time for all that, you can just get a complete set of coil-overs. They'll eliminate some of the fine tuning process, and still give better performance than a seperate shock/spring combo. As for tires, Honostly IMO, i've had some pretty good luck with Ventus tires. I had the HRII's and they were very good in the rain and way grippy on dry roads. The only complaint I've had was that at high speeds around a corner, you can hear the tires giving a little. It's not a like a sqeaking noise, more of a low screech. The tires, of course, still held their own and never gave out, but it's a little un-nerving. After you break them in though, the noise is less audible. I'm not sure if Ventus still makes them, but i got mine for about $50 each at PepBoys. Not too bad, and i do recommend them. As for wheels, a little tip, Anything but Motegi's. Motegi's are cheap in price, but from what i've seen, they're cheap in quality too. I've had a lot of friends that had problems with them, From denting to easy to the finish coming off way too soon to even having the lug holes go out of true! But on that last one, that was mostly my friends fault since he didn't use any hub centric rings, but once again, if the wheels were made of better materials, they wouldn't have messd up to that point!

 

I'd also go with sway bars as they will help you corner a lot better. I'm not sure what the best brands are for sway bars but they do in fact make a difference. I already had them on my car when I bought them. I don't know what brand they are but they do make a difference. Check out sounddomain.com, streetstyler.com or matrixracing.com to see what they have in the way of sway bars as well as struts and suspension. What I really should have done for my suspension and I totally regret is coilovers. Like SpyderGS says, they are the best. For one, you can lower or raise your car by hand. And you can also set the sensitivity of must shocks/struts. My friend has H&R's for his Mercedes and he's riding on 19" Maya rims. His car is so low and he hasn't scraped yet. That's how nice they are. I probably spent about $1,200 messing around with my suspension trying to get it to my satisfactory. I guss until I become a millionaire. Yeah right.

 

The sway bars may help a little with traction and control body roll a little better, but the stuff from the factory is actually quite good. Pretty much only the Turbo cars have the rear sway bars, although there are still mounting points for the rear sway on all cars. RMDSM makes a good set of sways, and they cost about $250 or so. On the lighter FWD's getting some strut tower braces would be more effective. Even just a front brace from any cheapie eBay store will make a noticeable difference.

But yeah, FatalJRA what the hell did you buy for $1200? My god, my suspension budget on any street car is never going to exceed $600, and you doubled that already? You must be richer than most here

 

I may have exaggerated on spending $1,200, but still quite a bit. I also found out that now I have to replace the springs I have in the front because my mechanic told me that the Tokico springs only handle 190 lbs and for the Eclipse spyders, you need around 400 lbs. which is much stiffer. I've been driving around with loose springs in the front for about 3 months. My final purchase is for stock springs and this will be it for suspension.