Tuning Coilovers for suspension travel

[Katsumbhong]

Hello Zilvia, I tried asking this on NICO and I guess it was too hard of a question to be answered there.

I have KTS Coilovers installed on my 180 and would like to know about tuning coilovers for suspension travel. I'm not talking about ride height, but "top half" of the coilover where the spring is, in relation to the "rod" of the shock goes into shock body, if that makes any sense.

I don't preload my springs because I would imagine it wouldn't permit correct suspension travel. Is there an optimal "position" where the spring can be adjusted to on the shock body? If I lower the spring too much on the shock body will the coilover be more prone to having its shock blown out?



Thanks in advance.

[NismoSilvia270R]

lowering the car all the way would definitely shorten your compression stroke, but i think you run into blown strut problems with strut/spring combos more than coilovers. cut/lowering springs on standard stroke struts.

i would assume that a coilover company would make the coilover to handle well within its height adj limits.

http://www.club4ag.com/faq%20and%20tech_pages/Dampers.html
http://www.club4ag.com/faq%20and%20tech_pages/Short%20Stroke%20Conversion.htm

some info from club4ag. good info. may not help you if you dont know the stroke of your struts and where compression/rebound are the same.

shock dyno may help there.

sorry if i didnt help at all, but its still good info nonetheless

[garagelu]

The top half of the coilover is to set preload. If you dont have weights to corner balance your car, there really is no accurate way to set preload. But the more preload you set, the stiffer its going to be. The way I did it is snugg the collars up to where the spring barely preloads.

Just make sure you measure all the lengths and make sure they are the same length.

[AceInHole]

The top half of the coilover is to set preload. If you dont have weights to corner balance your car, there really is no accurate way to set preload. But the more preload you set, the stiffer its going to be.

For linear springs, the springrate stays the same regardless of preload. Preload will only help to shorten droop travel. In practice you don't want your drop limiter constantly bottoming out (shocks reaching full extension) while driving. I've experimented in the past with limiting droop to extremes up front to make up for the very limited travel in back on some coilovers, but ended up ditching the rear sway instead. So, from experience, there's no reason to run zero droop/ extreme preload.

My suggestion would be to set your perches so they're barely snug against the spring. If your shocks are good you'll never loose retention of the spring (rebound damping SHOULD keep everything together) even if they aren't "tight". However, you don't want to bottom out the piston on the floater (another piston seperating gas and oil in your monotube shock), and you don't want the droop limiter hitting the shaft seals while driving.