I'm planning the suspension for my SFWD car, and I've decided to definitely go with 1000lb springs in the rear. I'm trying to plan the shocks to go with the springs, and the I'm having trouble deciding if its worth it to for over $450+ to fork over shocks (to upgrade my current stock ones).

My question is: with such a stiff spring in the rear (1000lb), how much good is a stiffer/adjustable shock actually going to do? It seems that with such a stuff back-end suspension, the shock won't be doing much at all. I'm already cutting mid 1.7 60's with nothing but a standard skunk2 coilover set (fronts and rears reversed) with stock shocks, stock axles, 24.5 slicks. Any thoughts?

 

any thoughts? How much does a shock actually do with such a stiff spring?

 

well the one important function of the shock is rebound damping. understand that a spring is just a device that stores energy - the energy used to compress the spring is released when the spring extends (rebounds). the shock's rebound damping does just what it sounds like - it damps (slows down) the rebound action of the spring, so that the spring returns to it's natural length smoothly and gradually, rather than snapping back rapidly.

in application you will find that using any spring with a shock which does not have enough rebound damping to control the spring rate will cause a bouncing or hopping motion of the rear end. it is hard to explain but if you ride in a car which has this effect you will know what I'm talking about. for drag racing this is bad for two reasons - the back end hops around on the launch which just makes the whole car move around and makes it harder to control. Also hitting any small bumps or undulations mid-track can cause the back end to start bouncing again which is not what you want when trying to control a FWD drag car (with almost no weight over the rear) at 100+ mph.

I personally run the Omni-Power drag coilovers which have rear spring rates of approximately 1100lbs. I am happy with their performance but I did have to set them up a little differently than how Omni recommends in the instructions in order to get them to work the way I wanted. If you end up going with these let me know and I will be happy to talk about the setup I used.

Another friend runs Ground Control coilovers with 1000lb rear springs on Koni Yellows and his setup works well also.

Unfortunately I'm not a very good driver I guess because with my Omni-Power setup I hit 2.0 60ft on BFG drag radials.

 

You can get Koni's revalved to work with higher rate springs.

 

how much do they charge to revalve a shock?
and where would i go?
any websites?