Handling and safety concerns should have a bit more to do with proper steering and suspension geometry than some arbitrary comment about a specific amount of lowering, so I was being a little facetious about your neighbor's comment. It seems that most hotrodders believe that unless a golf ball sitting in the middle of the street is in danger of being launched by the front bumper, the vehicle hasn't been "slammed" enough. Back when I attended the master wheel alignment training course at the Hunter Engineering facility in St. Louis, the rule of thumb was that a vehicle's ride height could vary +/- 1 inch from its factory-designed ride height without adversely affecting the geometry its steering and suspension system was designed with. Ditto for track width- - - -keep the centerline of the tire tread within 1" of its original position, or induce some geometric errors that wheel alignment adjustments cannot correct. I have deliberately violated that principle on numerous projects, but I had a specific goal in mind. "Go fast- - - -Turn left"- - - - -better than the other 20-something cars on the dirt track!
Jerry
