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Also, I just want to point out that the main purpose of springs is to hold your car up, the secondary purpose is to maintain grip with the road as the axle moves up and down. The purpose in life for a strut is to dampen the up-down motion of the springs.
This is sort of crucial to understand and internalize. It's not just your standard pot-holes, cracks, etc that springs take care of.. We're also talking rocks and small bumps. Say you launch in a small dip in the pavement: as you leave the depression you put extra pressure on the tires, excellent traction. Then you crest the rise of the dip, slightly unloading the pressure. It's small, but it's noticeable, especially with cheap tires.
So just take this scenario and mentally play it out with the different combinations of springs and struts.
Cheap springs and cheap struts, your car will unload more and you'll lose more traction, possibly skipping the tires.
Cheap springs and good struts, you'll unload less c cause the struts act to dampen the rise of the springs.
Good springs and cheap struts, you'll unload even less because the springs transfer the force more towards the car's chassis (the downside of the cheap struts is that when the spring relaxes (cause it will compress some) is that it will bounce more because the strut is less capable of handling the force. This can potentially cause minor skipping and loss of traction).
Lastly, with a matched upgrade of springs and struts you'll have the best traction because the spring will maintain grip coming off the rise and the strut will slow the release as the spring relaxes.
I think the thing that makes it confusing, and why people can get good results from one of the half-upgrade scenarios, is because springs can also act as cheap dampers, and struts can act has stiff springs. But really, you need to look at the two parts for what their intended purpose is.
Springs = Hold car up, maintain traction by transferring more force to the car.
Struts = Dampen movement of the springs.
This isn't meant as an answer to any particular application, but more as something to think about and use to make an intelligent purchase/upgrade.
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