I weigh 360 pounds. I feel sure I have compressed my poor Prius's springs, especially since the back looks like this
How did this thread make it into the PHEV forum? It's about springs? It's my opinion that you should replace both the shock and spring at the same time, but many members report good experiences with replacing just the spring. I don't have any personal experience regarding compressed springs, but it's my suspicion that a new set will give you somewhat better performance.
Most likely because the weight of the PHEV kits may make the car sit funny and require spring upgrades. I noticed when putting my Enginer kit into my Gen-1, that it cause the rear to sink about 1 inch from normal. But it really wasn't all that visible if you didn't know what it looked like immediately before. And since I am re-designing my Enginer kit to get rid of the giant heavy steel box, it should make the load even lighter.
I have found no spring upgrades for the Gen3 prius yet. The only solution I have found is to have customer springs made for the prius and that would be about $500 for 2 rear springs. I am desperately looking as I have about 330lbs of batteries and such in my Prius. The load is almost max so I cannot carry anyone or thing in my prius.
banshee, Have you tried contacting Luscious Garage, Pat's Garage, or 3Prong Power in the San Francisco area? They may have some ideas since they all do PHEV installs.
I seemed to have suffered a loss in handling with the bigger springs used in the 3Prongpower 10KWh conversion (300+lbs)...not sure what they used, but will be asking if they can tweak it a bit.
