Nohachi's suspension ramblings thread

[roman]

I'll have to read through your shock rates stuff later, after the affects of partying for a week for new years have worn off hahaha.

But something else of interest perhaps.

The relationship between suspension 'droop' (downward travel from rest, if shocks are captive and springs arent preloaded) is directly related to the spring rate, and weight of the car.

Pretty easy to calculate and show in a graph, as attached... (rename to .xls)

http://iforce.co.nz/i/rb3wlodi.bmp

Can change the spring rate and vehicle weight numbers around, just need to remember that it's the weight the springs are supporting (so not including diff or front struts etc)

What's interesting to note from the graph, is that there's diminishing gains towards running softer springs for the sake of gaining droop, until they get rediculously soft (below 6kg/mm)

Now what's interesting about this also, is that for a linear rate spring, the droop travel distance is also the same as the amount of travel in the other direction that you get, until the spring is pushing the car upwards at double the weight of the corner of the car.

So realistically, beyond this point is probably where the corner of the car is just going to jump up, instead of the spring resisting the weight of the corner of the vehicle.

So if you've got 8kg/mm front springs, realistically you're only going to get approx ~62mm of travel in total, unless you're jumping your car off a ramp or something haha.