Hi. what spring rates you guys running on the fronts?

I've just got some new coilover shocks for front of my dirt oval racer and need a ball park figure to start with. i was running one of the cheap ebay coilover kits but no idea what rates they are.

 

Stop.... Frank is going to pay you a visit if you dont go back and search.
There is no baseline or "one rate fits all"
You must test test test.
However if you go to google and use honda-tech in the search string you might find something.

 

not many oval guys on here, if at all.

if i were to set up the car, it wouldn't have the same rates in all four corners.

 

Done a bit of a search. (difficult though as i'm using my phone as power lead for laptop has bust)

I think the ones on the car are 10kg. no idea what this is in lbs. from what i can gather about 400 would be a starting point.

 

10K is 558lbs

What kinda car is this?

Put stiffer springs on the right side and softer on the left, get some eibach 8" springs and try like 400-500lb right front and 250-300 left side, for a baseline. Put some zip ties on teh shock shafts and observe the travel on each side and you can flatten the car out from there. You can also stagger the tires with slightly larger right side tires and smaller left sides.

No sway bars.

 

Thanks jw. its a mk1 golf with f20b. as we go clockwise i'll reverse your suggestions.
why no sway bar? just curious as i'm running the stock prelude one at mo. (4th gen running gear / subframe)

Adam

 

Ah, I assumed you ran counter clockwise. Yes reverse the sides.

No front sway bar because you will maximize traction at each drive wheel, considering the track you run has lots of bumps and undulations and a mostly loose surface. Now if they cut-n-pack the track and its smooth like a late model/midget/sprint car track, then you can play with sway bars in front, especially a much larger bar, to get the front inside nose down as the left front compresses. In theory, it works like a coil bind setup for nascar, as the soft inner spring compresses from the heavy bar pulling on the lower arm, you pull the whole nose down in the front. Giving you steering and drive traction on the glazed surface from the weight of the car tending to be front bias... you would have to play with left rear springs to dial that wedge in to a basic zone as well, then spring rubbers for fine tuning.

What kind of diff you got or are you running a spool?

 

LOL Justin said "undulation"

 

Get the front bar back on the car. You need it in a bad way. The VW stuff needs a big front bar just to make the front suspension work right. So get that bar out of the dumpster and get it back on the car. Spring rates will depend on your track conditions. You may not be able to run high spring rates. You can only work the surface and the tire so hard before one yields.

Need to figure out your corner weights first. Once you have that get back to us.

 

Ok guys. thanks for your input. the track is a 1/4 mile oval on a loose ish surface. but as day goes on it usually turnes into a hard polished surface. with a few rutts where it cuts out on corners .

The car is using a complete prelude setup so no golf except the outer body shell. as for diff at moment i'm using a Ukdm accord type r box and stock lsd. i might be going with a h2b set up for new build so don't want to spend on a new diff until i'm sure which box I'll be using.

 

hi guys, if i ditch my anti roll bar would i need to up my spring rates slightly to compensate?

 

smaller the swaybay the higher the spring rate the bigger the bar the softer the spring rate

 

Sorry, nothing to add to the thread, but was amused by the irony of going through the work to put a Prelude suspension/drive train under the body of a VW Golf but keeping it FWD. If I were going through that much effort, I'd make sure it was RWD and had at least 400+ hp on tap when I was done. :D

Ortiz had some advise in one of his news letters. He was responding to someone who was running a FWD dirt circle track car.

 

http://www.circletrack.com/index.html

be sure to pick up circle track magazine... they have great tech articles. i know nothing about mk1 golf can't help you there. sorry. lets see some pix/vids/specs of your car. also where are you located?? how much does it cost to race in the dirt? we don't have much dirt tracks left in california though. a lot of them closed down.

ps, anyone notice the HPD catalog/book thingy has links to all the circle tracks? cool beans ehh?

 

i'd love to have made a rwd one but then i'd be in a different class and up against people with much more money. maybe one day.

 

that looks super clean for a dirty track car. i can has moar pix plz.!!!

 

that was fresh from the build, bit less paint on it now.

some more pics for you.









this will be my 2013 racer. front engined f20b. full rolling space frame with bolt off bodyshell

 

Looks like Fun!!

 

looks amazing