Now I know what the effects are of having a coilover that is set too low past its recommended height such as increased bumpstop contact, increased roll center and loss of damper travel etc, but what about setting a coilover that is say 15mm higher than its max recommended height? What are the effects of that? The reason that I ask is that I read the KW article on speedhunters.com and one of the replies to the questions has confused me and Im trying to make sense of it.

"In cases where the vehicle doesn’t compress the spring very much, you should go for a softer spring. Furthermore, what do you mean by pre-load of the spring- have you wound up the perch until the main spring was pre-compressed in the normal ride height of the car? This is probably the worst thing you can do! Step back and go for a softer spring in order to create drop and travel as otherwise this won’t work!"


so what Iam trying to understand is that say Iam at 230mm or so from spring perch to control arm center nut (recommended spec is 205-215mm) am I compressing the main too much that there will be negative effects? I mean a damper doesnt really care what height it is at and you gain shock travel, so what negative side effects are there? The reason being that I autox and at my current height I have it so that Iam not coming into contact with the bumpstop but my ride height is not in the recommended manufacturers spec of the coilover by about 15mm or so.

Here is the KW article, its the second to the last question asked towards the bottom of the page.
http://www.speedhunters.com/2013/06/...our-questions/

 

so the higher you go the less droop travel you have... I'm not sure why they said 'drop travel'

droop travel is going to occur on the side of the car that isn't loaded into a corner - you generally want to limit droop to some range so that you end up limiting your max roll limit.

from an autox perspective 15mm less droop travel isn't going to be too much of a problem (likely none.) How much spring are you running? I'm not familiar with the shock travel on the coilovers you're running - how much droop travel do you have from your ride height? how much bump travel do you have?

 

I wouldn't worry about the stops on the KW's, they're pretty big and act as part of the spring package.

What version KW's do you have? assuming that's what you have.

 

sorry for the late reply, work has got me swamped, Im actually on the bilstein pss system with the stock bilstein stops/springs, when I measured it I was barely getting into the stops, now that Im at my current height (about 13.5inches from centercap to fender) I dont touch the stops anymore. I cant tell you what my drop travel and bump travel is since I only did the ziptie shaft test.

 

13.5 from center of center cap to bottom of painted fender edge? If so you'll be fine with droop.