I bought a set of H&R lowering springs for my '97 XJR6. As you can see the new one is about an inch or so taller than the old one. I was kind of afraid of this, I knew most XJR's were factory lowered but I saw a chart which excluded North American XJR's. The old one is flaking paint and chunks of rust. I'm not sure what I'm going to do at this point. The old ones are rough, but the new ones are gonna lift the car.

 

Your 1 inch too high height difference will be smaller as you put weight on them

They could actually be shorter than your original depending on the material

 

They should static squash down more, and if engineered properly they should give the same spring rate as factory. In theory.

Double check the part numbers with H&R, then try one side complete with wheel on and see what happens.

 

Reminds me of buying NOS front springs for my Series 1 XJ6 many years ago only to find they were mis labelled and were XJ12 or DS420.
Made the front impossibly high.

 

I'm holding off final judgement for another day or two but when I first put them in and manually squished the front a bunch of times... they are dead even. 1 side H&R lowering and the other side stock. Can't work out which side feels stiffer just by hand though.

 

I’ve got a set of H&R springs for my S tape are sitting on my workbench waiting for me to install it. And they have been there several months. One day I’ll get to it

 

Well what I ended up doing was cutting the factory springs, since I figure I have the H&R as a backup. I got some new spring seats for the open ends: monroe 907931 They don't quite match the contour loose, but compressed they fit up really well. I cut out about 1.25" from the bottom of the spring. Still plenty of preload and the new spring seat to keep the spring thoroughly in place. Bouncing the car manually its not rubbing, it'll be awhile yet until I do the rear springs and finally drive it.

 

SCC it looks good.

Is the 1.25" cut you made referring to the height of the unladen spring? Something like one full turn of the spring coil? And what method did you use to cut such a tough piece of metal?

I like this "free" method to lower the car. I wouldn't mind lowering the front of my car a bit during the next front bushings change. The front springs are still very robust and don't really need to be replaced.

 

I had a Cordia with cut springs once, it was the worst ride I've ever had. Cutting springs changes the spring rate unpredictably and you change how the load is distributed to the top plate thingamybob, it's really not a great idea.

 

Yes 1.25" off the car, measuring from the bottom of the spring to the bottom of the coil being cut. I used a Dremel with a cutoff wheel, and a little bit of water to cool things down as I went. The standard Dremel cutoff wheels are just shy of cutting through, but I could bend the last little bit back and forth til it broke off. Clean up the cut and reinstall with the new spring mounts.

Still haven't test driven it yet.