New "milder" Setup

[Loren]

As some of you may know, I've been running a K-Sport coilover kit pretty much since I bought the car in April of 2008. I never used the soft rear springs (2.2k) that came with the kit, I started out with 4kg/mm rear springs (the fronts are 4k) and upped them to 7k a while back. I also have a 23mm rear bar (thanks, Garm!) and a fairly aggressive alignment. The car has handled VERY well with this setup, but the ride quality on the street and the clunkiness of the rear spring setup (I kludged on some Tein springs that I had laying in the garage, they didn't fit quite right) was really starting to get on my nerves.

So... I decided to move myself back to the local autocross club's version of "stock class". It's a pretty liberal class, really. A lot of stuff is allowed, but a few key things aren't. The biggest thing is springs. I have to run stock springs at stock ride height.

Last weekend, I pulled most of the K-Sport kit, went back to completely stock in the front and stock springs w/ K-Sport shocks in the rear. The ride was surprisingly HORRIBLE! I didn't have time to mess with the shocks last weekend, and thought I had them extended near their max, and they were clearly at the end of their travel with the car at rest. The shocks behave oddly at full extension, not wanting to compress, even set at full soft... and with no room to extend... it was almost like having a solid steel bar for a shock! The rear suspension was totally locked tight at the stock ride height. I thought I might need to get another set of rear shocks (or fit the stockers back on there for a while).

Today, I pulled the rear tires to look at the rear shocks. I was half right. I was pretty sure I'd set the height within about an inch of its limit, and I did. But, it was 1" from their shortest length, not their longest. I had over 6" of shock length to play with! So, I used probably 5" of that and set the shock length so that the rear suspension can go full-droop without interference from the shocks.

Happily, now with the rear shocks set at full soft, the ride is delightfully smooth. (but still nicely balanced due to the big rear swaybar) And cranking the rear stiffness up a few turns shifts the weight transfer more to the front to plant the front in aggressive driving. I'll be testing it tomorrow at an autocross.

Also have a new set of Dunlop Star Specs (195/55-15) in the garage ready to go on next week.

The key thing I learned this week is that just like not having enough suspension travel due to lowering the car too much, if you don't have enough EXTENSION travel on your shocks, the ride can be just as bad, if not worse. An interesting situation that I'd never found myself in before.