Question guys:

My dampers on the rear have very little droop travel. There are spacers inside that intentionally limit it. If I were to have them removed how would this affect the handling of the car? The car would be less inclined to lift a leg i.e. the inside rear would touch the ground more during cornering--what effects would this have?

 

removing the droop limiters will _possibly_ cause more understeer. it kinda depends on what the rest of the suspension is doing. what are your rear spring rates and swaybar size?

nate

 

Still the Ohlins?

How much preload do you run? If not much then no big deal. If much then your transition as the inside rear unloads will be a sharper "dual rate" break between spring rate and tire rate. With rates as stiff as you should be running it should require only the slightest preload on one side or the other for your cornerweighting.

It's probably not a huge deal since I've seen people use cables as externally tunable droop limiters under preload - which I think is lame but....

I'd personally prefer the smoothest most linear transition at slight expense in rate of weight transfer off the inside rear.

Glen, don't you know by now that lifting the inside rear isn't necessarily a bad thing? "Any weight on the inside rear could have been on the inside front" - I heard that somewhere.

Scott, who says that if you remove the droop limiters you'll probably have to jack the car up higher when you're taking wheels on and off.

 

I tend to agree with Scott is saying, effect will be very minimal and amount of preload is could be a factor but still minimal. When rebuilding or shortening dampers at KONI, depending on people's wants for droop we can add or remove droop limiter (usually called a rebound stop). Depending on the springing of the car, it will likely have see most of it's true motion before you get the max droop point or the sway bar may keep it from getting full travel shock travel.

The biggest effect is going to be when jacking it up and how much droop you get. You'd certainly prefer not to have more droop than the point when yu lose all preload as the perch or spring can/will fall out of the upper perch at that point and might be a pain to realign.

 

Thank you for the comments, guys. My rear springs have zero preload in that they rattle and are free to move when the suspension is in droop. So there is no spring support when the wheel comes back into contact with the earth.

The perches seem to slip back onto the springs easily (sometimes with a nasty sounding bang), so it doesn't seem to be a problem from a practical standpoint.

So the consensus seems to be that it won't make much difference. So I'll keep them in there.