I want to lower my S4. So I called my shop and asked and they said the springs themselves are fairly cheap, but it requires about 5 hours of labor. Is this the normal amount of time? they also said I need new shocks and the total would be around 1800. Does this sound right?

 

If you ask me, buy some coilovers (stasis street or vogtlands arent too expensive) and DIY http://www.audiworld.com/tech/wheel28.shtml

If thats beyond your capibilitys or you dont have the tools i guess your stuck going to a shop

 

I can do coil overs myself I was just looking for a less expensive route, but maybe there isn't one

 

Definately not a less expensive route out there. Go for the coilovers, I just put h&r on this weekend myself. Five hours is about right, I had trouble with the front right, but that was all, the rears are a little harder to compress because the springs are smaller, but I just turned down the air gun when I put the spring compressor on.

 

Don't skimp and just get springs - you will not be happy with the results. You're better off saving up and doing it right.

 

A word of advice, don't just put the springs on. I don't know where you live, but here in Colorado, the roads get pretty f'd up from the snow and driving a lowered vehicle can be real PITA.

Second, it's really nice to see a tiny 3 inch piece of ice in the road in the middle of December and think "oh I can clear that no problem" until you hear the gut-wrenching noise it makes as it shreds the underside of your front bumper and gets stuck under your belly pan.

I had a set of eibachs on bilstein sports and I ended up installing the ECS coil over kit because the ground clearance just wasn't acceptable for the Colorado winters. I don't know where you live, but definitely get coil overs if you live somewhere where you might be on a less than perfect road.

However, the Eibach/Bilstein/ECS kit was awesome, the car handled like a dream.

Springs are cheap, you can pick up the shocks for ~$125 each (as I recall) and the coil over kit is something like $250. For me, it worked out to be a great frankenstein'd set of coil overs.

 

I was looking at those ECS tuning kits. I think I might look into them more now that someone has actually used them. LOL

Josh

 

yah, for the money, they're a pretty good deal. Lightweight aluminum collars, all quality hardware -- I recommend.

 

yeah I live in Colorado too. Thanks for the advice I think I'll do the ecs kit with H&R's

 

Keep in mind, the coil over sleeves in the ECS kit are only machined to fit over Bilstein shocks (at least that was the case when I installed the kit, things may have changed since then, check with ECS...).