The Reverend

No it hasn't. My recommendation to Ry was to use 1100-1300 lb front springs and 900-1100 in the rear with stock sway bars. I believe you need very high spring rates if you're going to use big slicks on this car and want to keep the wheels planted. That's a ton of grip for the suspension to cope with and the springs are "disadvantaged" by the heavy angle the shocks sit at.

Ry went with your way. Like I said, it works and does keep the rear inside wheel on the ground, but I don't believe it's the optimal solution and it's not how I will do it on my car if/when I move up to slicks eventually.

BTW, I thought of a second reason why excessive droop concerns me... it could make the car more prone to a rollover. Not saying it would make a huge difference, but if the car goes skipping across dirt sideways and the suspension unloads, having a wheel catch the ground with the suspension drooping 8 inches will give that wheel a lot more leverage to turn the car over than if the suspension is drooping 4 or 5 inches.

The Reverend

It's done.

Final confirmation should come tomorrow, but I put the order through spec'ed as follows:

- JRZ triple adjustables with no quick-disconnects (need to save money and don't want extra places for failures)
- 750 front / 700 rear springs (might swap those front/rear if it understeers)
- Valved for use with 700-1200 lb springs on a 2700 lb car (they may use the same valving as usual, but Ryan put a note in their that that's what it will be used with)
- Ride height at approx. 1.5-2.0 inches below stock (didn't know exactly where I'm at, but I figured it's somewhere in there)
- 4-5 inches of droop

I think it's good to have droop, but I'm convinced you run out of benefit when you go to as much droop as they have without the limiters. Granted, my concerns about nuisance for working on the car is minor and it probably wouldn't make it that much more prone to rollover. But I see the added benefit of all that droop as even less than the admittedly minimal downsides.

The Reverend

I'm having that post-huge-purchase sick feeling in my stomach

I seriously only have a few hundred bucks to my name now.

TubeDriver

Sounds like a kickass setup, one very much like I plan on doing perhaps next year. Good choice! The spring length thing always gets me, what length spring did you end up with? Also, does the suspension preload help to prevent full drop (with f/r swaybars)?

The Reverend

Dunno what length springs they're going to have on them - I'll leave that up to TRG and JRZ.

You can use preload to shorten your droop because it makes the coilover compress less distance with the car resting on the suspension. BUT, that means the car will have a taller rideheight. If you use a buddy club type of coilover you can preload the spring to limit droop and then shorten the shock length with the bottom mount so the ride heigh is still low. With the JRZs, you have to preload according to the ride height you want, no how much droop you want. To limit droop, you put droop limiting tubes inside the damper so the shock shaft doesn't extend out as far.

offroadr35

I came into this a bit late. Mind if i ask who is doing the setup and how much the triple adjustable JRZ's are going to cost? I am pretty sure I'm going with triple adjustable Penskes on the Elise which should cost me about $1200 per corner.

The Reverend

Oooohhh - elise.

I ordered through The Racer's Group. I was originally supposed to go through Wael at Elda Engineering, but he's been totally MIA, so I went directly to the distributor for NA.

JRZs are generally a little cheaper than Penskes.

twohoos

You've obviously thought about this a lot, so I hope the results give you what you expect. Whatever happens, it'll be a valuable data point for the S2K racing community.

Still... I think many of us (Ry, DK, C3 and I) have essentially come to the conclusion that swaybars are great on the street (where they provide roll stiffness without much impact to ride quality), but suffer from the big disadvantage that they simply make an independent suspension that much less independent. Remember -- it's a big steel bar connecting two corners of the suspension! For the driven wheels especially, this can cause big headaches. So most of us have decided that (for racecars anyway) swaybars should be as small as possible, ideally absent on the driven wheels, and only used for fine-tuning the car's steady-state handling balance.

Prolene

That likely explains why the Elise does not use a rear swaybar.

davepk

Entirely.

Rev, I think you will be very happy with the setup you just purchased. Even if it doesn't work quite the way you think it might you wont have to get rid of the shocks to make it right. At this point the most you are looking at are spring changes and the removal or installation of sway bars.