i have been searching around but have not found the answer i'm looking for on this subject...most people gain suspension travel by using the ground control extended tophats or something like that...

i just put some progress coilovers on my em2 which has mcpherson in the front...i was thinking the other day...what would be the ideal setup with height and shock travel....i have about an inch of travel in the fronts and i was wondering if this is enough

is there a way to increase travel besides raising the height of the car...also what kind of travel do most people here have

 

slamm it bro

 

1 inch at the strut is not much stroke on a strut car with a .9 or .85 motion ratio. Unless the car is super stiffly sprung, you are quite likely hitting the bump rubber quite a bit. If your bump rubber is a relatively soft and compressible unit, it would be better than a short hard one which will likely cause handling and grip issues if you make contact.

You can always put a zip tie around your shock rod and cut off the tail to make a travel indicator. Before a drive, reach in an push the zip tie down on the strut body then do driving around like normal. When you return, the zip tie will be riding up on the rod to show the highest point of compression travel it saw. If it is close to but not touching the bump rubber, then you are okay. Touching the bump rubber a bit is okay if it is a soft one. Buried up inside the bump rubber is telling you that you need more height and stroke or more spring rate to hold the car up more

 

the bumpstops are polyeurethane...i'm not exactly sure what hitting them feels like but i will try the ziptie thing...

any ways of knowing i'm hitting the bumpstops just from how it feels driving?

 

if you give us the spring rates your running we could give you a rough estamate.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by fi dx &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">the bumpstops are polyeurethane...i'm not exactly sure what hitting them feels like but i will try the ziptie thing...

any ways of knowing i'm hitting the bumpstops just from how it feels driving?</TD></TR></TABLE>

Depending on how hard the durometer of the polyurethane is, you may know when you car goes crunch, you start urinating blood, or you hit a bump and forget what you were talking about. Although some polyurethanes have been getting somewhat softer of late, most that I have seen are quite hard and not really well suited for bump rubbers. Sway bay bushings yes, bump stops no. A good bump rubber is a pretty soft cellular foam material that you can initiall sqeeze pretty easily by hand but gets firmer the harder you squeeze. You use these a little bit longer than a hard one and let it progressively build force instead of hitting a hard object like hockey puck and slamming to a stop. Stopping your suspension motion suddenly will definitely cause an instantaneous loss of some amount of tire grip and can risk damage to other parts. If your poly stops are hard, you definitely don't want the car to touch them at all.

 

i haven't qutie had a time where i've pissed blood or had any bump near that severe....however during hard cornering i would get some crazy understeer adn it would bounce a little....that's when i decided to ask this question to see how much travel i should have...it would have a lot more understeer than when i had them set a little higher...i've since raised the suspension up about an inch and gained back a lot of needed travel and the understeer is gone and it is a lot less bumpy through corners

 

I think you have already answered your question be raising the car a bit and the problem going away. Maybe the peeing blood was a bit of an exageration but the hard bump and loss of grip wasn't. Your understeer when pushing hard is exactly the kind of grip loss that you might experience if the car is just starting to make real contact or run out of clear stroke.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by CRX Lee &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I think you have already answered your question be raising the car a bit and the problem going away.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Yep

I have 2-2.5" of bump travel from ride height on my track car (integra), and thats with the wishbone suspension up front.. so you'll get more wheel travel before you run into the bumpstops.