I was curious to know....why is it exaclty that the lower settings make a smoother ride on the highway than stiffer settings. Obviously if you're going over a bump on the high way with super soft settings then the shocks would contour the bump. But on the other hand what about dips at high speeds?? Since the shock isnt so stiff wouldnt it dip harder whereas if you rode of with a stiffer setting the shocks would allow a lesser bounce??? For a month i had been working with settings such as 2/4 2/5 and even 3/4 on the HW with this notion and all I'd still have a bouncy ride Just the other day I had tried 1/2 for the first time and its' so damn smooth now!! So i dont get it, what's going on?


[Modified by superduperman, 9:49 PM 2/16/2003]

 

The car does 'move' more on softer settings. This movement allows for a longer distance to decellerate the car in reference to the ground - thus your butt feels less acceleration.

 

shocks control the rate of suspension travel (body roll). A critically damped system will not be bouncy or overdamped.

 

A critically damped and overdamped situation however is very likely to feel unpleasant to the human body whether it makes you nauseous or just not feel good. There are certain frequencies that the human body parts bounce (ever feel your belly move seperately from the rest over a bump or enjoyed the motion of your lady friend?) at relatively high motion suspension speeds. Severe underdamping can make this unpleasant too. Since your comment was regarding to the softer settings feeling better, you are probably in your prefered range under critical for those inputs but not too low. This is where a more degressive cvalving curve can give really good handling motion control on small inputs but be more reasonable to ride in on the higher mtion situations.