Best way to adjust rear coil overs for proper height on my SPF

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by DanEC

I'm not disagreeing - just curious what I would do with this information.

It's not what you do with information, it's how you adjust the coilovers so that you have the proper ride height while having as close to 50/50 cross-weight distribution with your body weight behind the wheel. Your car will do everything better if you set it up this way and it costs nothing to do it.

[DanEC]

Originally Posted by patrickt

It's not what you do with information, it's how you adjust the coilovers so that you have the proper ride height while having as close to 50/50 cross-weight distribution with your body weight behind the wheel. Your car will do everything better if you set it up this way and it costs nothing to do it.

So if I understand correctly your initially scaling the car and then adjusting the coilovers to jack the spring loading from one corner of the car to the diagonal corner and vice versa with the other diagonal corners. Your not actually moving weight - just compensating with spring pre-load - in other words tansferring loading to or from - say the LR corner to the RF corner. I assume that when re-scaled the pre-loading is reflected in weight shown on the scales and you're shooting for approximately equal L to R. Am I understanding this or completely missing the whole point? I'm more of a straight-line guy than a roundy-round guy.

It seems like that could seriously screw up how the car sits on level ground if one got too carried away with this.

Go ahead - flame away.

[patrickt]

Right, you do not actually put weights around the cars, you're just adjusting the springs (but you can move weight around, like the battery to the back of the car). You can get the corner weights right, and the ride height right, by taking your time and watching the scales. Try downloading that little program from Performance Trends that has the demo and try "raising the coilover" and then "lowering the coilover" and you can see how it affects the other wheel weights along with the ride height.

[scottj]

Originally Posted by DanEC

So if I understand correctly your initially scaling the car and then adjusting the coilovers to jack the spring loading from one corner of the car to the diagonal corner and vice versa with the other diagonal corners. Your not actually moving weight - just compensating with spring pre-load - in other words tansferring loading to or from - say the LR corner to the RF corner. I assume that when re-scaled the pre-loading is reflected in weight shown on the scales and you're shooting for approximately equal L to R. Am I understanding this or completely missing the whole point? I'm more of a straight-line guy than a roundy-round guy.

It seems like that could seriously screw up how the car sits on level ground if one got too carried away with this.

Go ahead - flame away.

For any corner that you raise by increasing pre-load, you increase weight on that corner and the diagonal corner. Ex: raise the RR and you increase the weight carried on the RR and the weight carried on the LF. Likewise, the weight carried on the LR and RF would decrease by an equal amount. And yes, if you increase pre-load on only one corner, say the RR, you will increase ride height on the RR, LR, and RF, while decreasing ride height on the LF, thereby "screwing up how the car sits on level ground". But, say the LR/RF is carrying more weight than the RR/LF; you would decrease pre-load on the LR/RF springs and increase pre-load on the RR/LF. This will maintain ride height while while "balancing" your cross-weights.

You can not equalize L to R weight with spring pre-load adjustments.