Chassis flex & dampers

[tderonne]

Three points:

Don't forget tires are springs too. Spring rate is in the neighborhood of 1200 pounds/inch. The higher the spring rate (and/or wheel rate depending how you want to look at it) the more the tire rate comes in to play. 1200 pound wheel rate on the back of that trick FWD World Challenge car? 50% of the total real spring rate is uneffected by the rear dampers!

And, in my opinion (and many others - but lets not not start a debate) the suspension load paths you want the cage to reinforce are the spring perches. And in the path of the spring axis.

As far as dampers go, more to the point of this thread, how about some used whatever from all the teams that weren't using Konis in the Koni challenge series? Dynamic/Multimatic stuff comes to mind, lots of Mustangs will be ditching that stuff. It's essentially all custom, it can be completely taken apart. You could build just about anything with it (if the length and travels are close I guess).

[rsportvolvo]

Three points:

Don't forget tires are springs too. Spring rate is in the neighborhood of 1200 pounds/inch. The higher the spring rate (and/or wheel rate depending how you want to look at it) the more the tire rate comes in to play. 1200 pound wheel rate on the back of that trick FWD World Challenge car? 50% of the total real spring rate is uneffected by the rear dampers!

And, in my opinion (and many others - but lets not not start a debate) the suspension load paths you want the cage to reinforce are the spring perches. And in the path of the spring axis.

As far as dampers go, more to the point of this thread, how about some used whatever from all the teams that weren't using Konis in the Koni challenge series? Dynamic/Multimatic stuff comes to mind, lots of Mustangs will be ditching that stuff. It's essentially all custom, it can be completely taken apart. You could build just about anything with it (if the length and travels are close I guess).

Good point on tires.

Dynamic makes very nice dampers. The only issue is that remote reservoir dampers aren't allowed and you would have install the canister dividing piston in the main damper housing. Also used damper's are not always that cheap, especially the higher end ones.

Another good point brought to my attention by EXE-TC's owner is the damper has to move to work (master of the obvious, but is it so obvious?). So if you are running high spring rates a nicer damper is worthless. The suspension doesn't move enough to utilize the damper as a tuning tool.