Quote Originally Posted by blackshine007
To answer the debate of Cactus and QD, Cut springs are bad. Heated springs are worse.
To cut coils off is one of the methods the misinformed consumer becomes attracted to. Why? Because it's cheap (so they think). Cutting a spring causes an unknown increase in spring rate. This may cause unknown (usually poor) results in handling and safety of the vehicle. The cutting of a spring also increase the stress level put on the spring as well as adversely effecting other related chassis components.
Heating the spring so that coils collapse to lower it actually anneals the spring temper of the steel, which causes the heated part of the spring to fatigue. Generally some of the coils are heated so they collapse against each other. As the spring was not originally designed in this manner, it puts additional stress on the balance of the spring resulting in unknown spring rates and premature failure. Cutting or heating of a suspension spring will result in pre-mature failure (sagging or actual snapping) of the spring. Depending on the time of occurrence, this can cause expensive (and even hazardous) results. This failure not only affects the handling, ride quality and safety of the vehicle, it also can result in bottoming of the shocks/struts (which causes pre-mature failure and unsafe handling) and excessive tire wear due to non-alignable suspension = Bad News.

Cutting and heating of springs began when there was basically no other options to consider. At that time, sport springs were not available for many applications. With the popularity of suspension modifications for both the performance and appearance markets, sport springs are now available for most enthusiasts' makes & models.




http://www.upgrademotoring.com/suspe...vs_cutting.htm



Basically!