O.K. Hopefully I can get across what my mind is thinking....

My question is about suspension travel, and a lot of what I have been reading lately has said that you want as little suspension travel as possible without having the car being too stiff and bouncing all over the place.

Here is my setup up. I have the Buddy Club Racing Spec Dampers with the 12k rear and 8k in the front. So far I am loving how the car feels with the swapped spring rates, so I am looking for suggestions on tuning the car even more. The Buddy Clubs are height adjustable by changing the actual length of the shock rather than doing it with the spring and changing the pre-load. My question is should I have as little pre-load as possible on the springs?? This would make it so you would have more suspension travel rather than if you preloaded the spring right?? But don't you want to have little suspension travel for track driving so you don't change the geometry of the wheel assembly as much during hard corning. Hopefully you guys get what I am asking.

 

This is part/most of the answer you're looking for:

https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=247965

Roll stiffness and lateral g's determine how much travel you need, it's up to you to provide enough room for it. If you're bottoming you need to increase the spring or bar rates, or increase the ride height.

Scott, who says one of the most important things is that you don't want to bottom out during cornering...

 

sorry, I just want to make sure I have this straight. You are saying to put the shock body on the car threaded at least 1 inch at the bottom and then work from there to get about a 1/4 inch of shaft travel. Does that mean that the rod will be out of the shock body about a 1/4 inch? So, I have had some people say that the benefit of these shocks is that you don't have to change ride height by using the pre-load of the spring, but you were saying kind of the opposite right??


[Modified by itr1236, 7:46 PM 3/6/2003]

 

When you are at interference bottom (a-arm hitting the inner fender or tire hitting the inner fender) you want 1/4 inch or less of free shaft (this measured without a bumper - which you will reinstall when you're done setting up).

If you read over what I wrote in that post, and think about it for a while it should be clear to you that making ride height changes with body length isn't a great idea.

Scott, who says "of course, it may not be important to do it right at all"....