When you lower your car, what does that do to the ride quality? I know the stiffer the springs the rougher the ride, but if you do the Shelby drop and cut a coil or so out of the fronts, how does that effect the ride?
The Shelby drop does not make the car ride stiffer.
When you cut coils out of a spring - now that will make the car ride stiffer. Just think of it this way: when a coil spring deflects, every bit of it bends a slight amount to give you the total deflection. If you remove part of the coil spring, the rest of the spring has to bend a greater amount to give the same total deflection. Since every small section of the spring is bending more, the amount of force to compress the spring increases.
1. Shelby drop (free - well ok it costs an alignment, but that's not spendy).
2. Rebuild rear leafs like Opentracker does (I hope the thread's still around). This mod isn't free, but for sure less than $100, probably less than $50.
3. You can cut the front coils a little if necessary to fine tune the front (free if you have a grinder).