I've been digging on these articles the last three days. Fascinating stuff. I especially like the auto-x guy in Canada's website. The section about shocks was eye opening.

Thanks a lot.

 

From my understanding, this should--theoretically--apply to only progressive rate springs. Can anybody confirm this?

 

In a perfectly linear ideal spring, no.

But in the real world, in the middle ~60% to 70% of the stroke the spring rate will be pretty constant, but after that the number of effective coils will be reduced and the spring rate will increase.

But usually bump stop packers take effect before that happens.

 

This is not something that you can just get off the web. There are dozens of factors for selecting a particular spring rate...for a given use, surface, tire, shock, sway bar, or set of rules, etc. Garrison is right in the general terms and it just gets more complicated from there. Subscribe to Racecar Engineering, Grassroots Motorsports and get Fred kuhn's old book, then start asking questions.

 

Actually OptimumG's Tech Tips posted above is as cut and dry as it gets for selecting spring rates. I had forgotten about that one because I combined all the articles into a single PDF on my laptop a few years ago

I'm saving my pennies for a Claude Rouelle training seminar

 

Wow, thanks for the words of wisom. I'm eternally in your debt.

 

that's one way to make friends.

wtf are you posting the picture of your car in every post? use a signature and be less of an asshat if you want any help in this forum.

 

very mature, thanks.

and you're an administrator? so what are you in like the eighth grade?

(I left my car pic out of the post, just for you, honey.)

 

FWIW That is theory with no empirical values for the car. Its not even as good for the layperson as a simple suspension software package for scca. Even more to the point, I can use values at his optima that will make the car slower in competition, due to all of the factors I identified earlier.

 

Ya, he's "Just" an administrator. I think you should PM the site owner and have his admin privileges taken away...





Grow thicker skin, you'll ALWAYS get stupid comments/advice, you will also get good advise, be more willing to learn and try to not come off like a know-it-all/smartass. Such open-ended questions aren't easy to ask and leave the door open for said stupid/vague replies. Try asking more narrowly-focused questions and keep learning.