http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=207354

Wondering if any of you have experimented with zero droop setups. It's commonly done in the front on open wheel racecars. What I mean is that the suspension is already at full droop with the car at rest. When turning the inside suspension does not extend. Weight is transfered off the inside to the outside, but only the outside compresses. There are aero benefits, as the front aero stays closer to the ground. You also get less roll since the inside suspension does not extend. Supposedly turn-in is very sharp. You'd have to wind preload into the spring so that when you set the car down the suspension barely compresses, maybe 1mm. Obviously you'd have to adjust the ride height back down using a separate adjustment, so you'd need something capable of doing this. I'm also wondering if you'd need special shocks to do this or if you'll wreck the internals by placing so much load on it in extension.

Someone try it! Maybe in the rear! Wait, that didn't sound right...

 

The easiest way to do it with these cars would be to use tethers to prevent droop.

I've investigated it, but determined that on the driven axle you'd be a fool to do this, and on the rear with a typical big bar/big spring setup there is little advantage. The inside rear already droops very little in roll. Having it droop less will just make entry looser and won't do anything for mid corner/corner exit.

 

^^^ correct... also we used to (in the rc car world) install spacers between the shock piston and the inside of the shock body to limit droop travel, but this was applied to a car with lots of travel and mostly on the non-driven end (read front). good thought though. I as well have seen tethers used to control it for little cost. pretty sure koni or any good rebuilder could engineer it into the shock aswell..

 

The reasons why they do things in F1 are not always rational for those who want good low-speed mechanical grip.

For example, putting shocks over the drivers legs and destroying the perfect A-Arm geometry does not make their cars handle better at low-speed! Yet every F1 car is designed this way.

Although, I did recently read that they are all removing Rear Springs in order to make the rear end grippier. Additionally, I don't think you would have any droop if you didn't have main springs.

I think in the rear of our cars you could also do this if you setup a rocker bar setup because you can introduce a third 'heave' spring between the rockers. Then you could control ride height with the heave spring, roll resistance with the sway bar and dampers-all without using any main springs. It would be interesting to test this out on a street car (but don't do it on the front!)

 

Seen this on Porsche Cup cars that were at my brother in law's shop. Shortened shocks+extended top hat with enough preload or really stiff springs should do the trick; I've tried this on my Civic though only the fronts(cut stock springs onto 89 Accord shocks+flipped perches+forks moved up). Even with the cut springs there was a LOT of preload(using a HF spring compressor, I barely got it on there). I didn't do a great job but you can see I tried