I know this is a newbie ? but I searched for it and couldnt find anything. (Bad searches?). If I drop my sedan an inch and leave the stock shocks on there will it hurt the shocks? Same ride quality? Im taking it to college so I want everything to be good. Thanks

 

depending on the spring rate you use, it will prematurely wear them out.

If you want to get any performance improvement over stock, you'll want
to get aftermarket dampers to match. the stock dampers are just too
soft.

 

Yeh I dont need performance upgrade, just looks so I can put sum 19s on thur. I dont wanna spend a ton of money on "dampers" and stuff. What are dampers? How much $?

 

"dampers" are the same as "shocks"....they're really just short for "Shock absorbers" or "shock dampeners". In other words, their purpose is to absorb or dampen the bumps & jolts caused by road imperfections.

And in case you're wondering, "struts" are the same thing. Well, all struts are shocks, but not all shocks are struts...does that make sense?

A 1-inch lowering shouldn't really hurt your shocks much. On the other hand, a severe drop will wear out your shocks alot faster because since they (the springs) are much shorter (than factory), the shocks will tend to bottom out (reach their full travel) and thus the seals will get damaged. On a normal setup, bump-stops will prevent the bottoming-out...however, they usually get cut or tossed out when lowering to retain travel. Now, the end of the shocks assume the role of the bump-stops...resulting in damage after so many hits.

Not sure if that explanation is very clear...hahaha...sorry, I'm tired right now - its 12:30am. Hope it helped somewhat, though...good luck!

 

nice write up^^^

 

This is only half of the reason why shocks fail faster, the other has to do with many aftermarket lowering springs which use springrates significantly different than the stock springrates which also make the shocks work harder outside of their normal operating specs.