For anyone who drives an LS you know that because of it's long wheelbase and semi-tall height, it doesn't have the greatest handling. Along with RWD, understeer is a probem.

But I'm sure for those who own an LS, you bought it for it's smooth and quiet ride, not to have a sports car feel. So I'm sure anyone who read this might just say go buy a GS or an IS and start modding. So I'd appreciate anyone who can offer any suggestions on how to improve the stock 90-94 LS's handling. I dunno, I'd like to drive a big boat that can handle and go fast. ;-)

So where to start? It doens't look like I am going to get rid of my car for a while ($$ probs)so I might as well have fun with it. My goals are to reduce body roll in corners and keep at least a little, if not some (haha) of the great Lexus ride quality.

Does anyone actually make sway bars for the LS? I haven't seen any. I know the TRD strut bar can be made to fit, but what exactly do these help with?

New shocks/struts are a great way to better the handling, but is it even better with new springs? I don' like the idea of a super lowered LS, it just gives it that ricey feel. If anything, 1" would be the max I would lower my car.

Bigger wheels help with cornering, but I haven't seen many rims that look great on the LS that don't cost a fortune. Maybe upgrading to 93' (16" as opposed to 15") and up rims would help a bit.

Anyone have any input?

 

I've spent thousands on tires over the years. Good tires are worth spending some dough on.

Upgrading rims and putting low profile tires on your car may look neato - but I think it creates a rice-boy look that *I* don't want on a lexus. Lowering the profile can severely effect the ride quality as well (in a bad way). Additionally, bigger and wider rims, unless you spend thousands, can be quite heavy. Unsprung weight, especially weight that must be spun up to get the car moving, is a horrible thing. Most of the improvements can be realized by just getting decent tires on normal sized (or stock) rims.

Get a real summer street tire. One with a very agressive street-holding tread pattern. We're not slinging mud with these things. They gotta hold on to hot pavement at 80+ MPH.

When you're pulling some G's, most of the car's weight is on the outside edge of the tire anyway. The tire is designed to roll onto it's sidewall by a small amount. All-season tires have big treads that are fine for gravel, but don't have any protection for this sideways tire-roll.

But a stock sized performance tire does. And if you compare the contact patch of a stock-sized tire and much wider tire during hard cornering (at the limit of adhesion), the stock tire has almost as much as a wider tire anyway. Not as much - but, close.

The suspension in the lexus has a lot of sway, but . . . that's where we get the ride quality. The suspension parts are set to adjust the camber of a tire when the shocks get squashed down. This helps keep the contact patch as wide as possible too. Stiffening the shocks circumvents the engineer's preset values for tire position at different loads, and will reduce the camber correcton. Overall stiffer shocks will improve handling - but . . . again I say a GOOD set of OEM shocks keep the tires on the road, and correct spring tension provides the correct amount of sway that the rest of the car counts on.

Anyway, I'm getting long winded. Like I said, dump money in the tires. I rarely buy a tire for under $200 a piece, and I get around 50K miles out of a set of four, properly rotated. My car looks stock, but holds the corners, and provides excellent feedback to allow me to drive it hard without any annoying surprises when the transmission suddenly jumps down to almost-redline in second gear to power out of a hairpin turn. Tires stay planted, car jumps forward, and the FWD acura 3.2 wonders what happened as it hits the brakes to avoid plowing through a turn that I just flew around.

Oh, as for understeer . . . all I can say is, give it some gas to move the weight to the back. A big car with a motor over the front tires is always gonna understeer. I like having the safety net. It's bad news to have the wrong end of a big car leading the way. If you're understeering, I figure you're just exceeding the adhesion on junk tires. Get some really sticky tires on there, and the understeering threshold will be so much further out that it's not as much of an issue.

These opinions come from my Q45 - I don't own a lexus (yet). But I'll never own another Q45! :-) The lexus is next, as I'm tired of spending more time UNDER my car than IN it.

Alicemet

 

Coilovers, STB, and Toms chasis brace shall do the trick, along with some wide 18in rims.

 

That whole Tom's thing only fits '94 and up. The only coilovers that I know of that are sold in US are JIC Magic. Or is there something I don't know?