We knew ahead of time that building a sporty suspension for the Nissan Altima project sedan would not be an easy task. The original Nissan Altima suspension came with soft springs, an inadequate sway bar and no strut brace(s). Combined with average struts, this produced a very soft ride and non-responsive cornering, which overall amounts to a rather average, if not below-par, suspension system. The original struts are not capable of recovering from absorption of road stress under hard cornering situations. This results in severe body roll which alters the steering significantly. By far, the Nissan Altima suspension was not designed for high-performance applications. In fact, it is a very generic suspension setup that Nissan used across a wide spectrum of their models. It is designed to be quiet, soft and provides the driver with adequate handling ability under normal driving situations.

Building the sport suspension for a 1993-1997 Nissan Altima presented a few initial problems. The very process is hampered by the lack of pre-existing coilover systems that are designed for both daily driving and the extreme stress of autocross or drag racing. Before assembling the ultimate Altima suspension, we listed the characteristics that we desired. Among those were fully adjustable height settings, a strong strut that can handle the stress, solid springs, adjustable camber, extreme stability and the solid feel of control.

To start transforming this family sedan into a road ready machine we first decided to stabilize the chassis. In order to reduce body roll, we replaced the thin original sway bar with a thicker Suspension Techniques (Stillen) rear sway bar. An upgraded rear sway bar produced significant positive changes during hard cornering by reducing chassis flex. To upgrade the front wheel portion of the suspension, we installed a heavy duty "Nismoman" A-Arm brace along with a rock-solid Stillen Front Strut Tower Brace. While working on the front portion of the suspension, we noticed that the factory bushings were not only worn out, but were also made out of low quality composite material. To upgrade the OEM front sway bar bushings, we called upon Whiteline. Whiteline provided our project Nissan Altima with solid, high quality bushings.

We were rather satisfied with the improved stability of our project Altima after the aforementioned upgrades. What used to be an unresponsive sedan with extreme body roll, was now a firm and stable machine that was ready to handle a road course. However, our quest to build the ultimate suspension did not end here.

To give our project Altima an aggressive appearance and further improve on the handling, we disassembled the OEM spring and strut combination and replaced the springs with fully adjustable Ground Control sleeves which were combined with 325 in/lbs front springs and 350 in/lbs rear springs by Eibach. The soft OEM struts were replaced by strong Tokico struts, which was a great complement to the adjustable suspension. We had to completely remove the spring perches from the Tokico struts since we were using adjustable sleeves to control the "drop" of the vehicle.

To bring our new suspension within specifications, we installed adjustable Stillen (by Cusco) front camber plates (-2.5 degrees) and an adjustable camber bolt in the rear supplied by the professionals at Eibach (-1 degrees).

To glue the vehicle to the ground we replaced the original 15" factory wheels with larger 18" Konig wheels, which were wrapped in Yokohama Parada 215/40/18 tires. The new wheels, along with the upgraded suspension, not only gave our project Nissan Altima an aggressive look, but more importantly, produced outstanding handling and stability. The vehicle was now responsive during cornering and provided great feedback via the solid high performance suspension.