You're right, dropping your car may help with roll stiffness, but it's better to leave the job to the sway bars. You need at least a little lateral weight transfer to turn harder, and getting rid of the rest of the body roll with springs is a bit too excessive, and not such a good idea. Because your outer wheels need to turn faster than the inside wheels in a turn, you want to transfer weight out there for more traction to keep the speed ratio needed. If your car was a stripped, lightweight track car with a reinforced chassis, I wouldn't argue about a stiffer suspension. And keep in mind that the more you drop your car, the more you've moved the center of gravity to the side which actually counters the benefit of lowering it more than anything unless you've found a way to fix it.

 

High spring rates are not the same as dropping your car.
The other HUGE thing that higher spring rates do is counter dive & squat.
Something sways have little effect on.

 

That would depend on if the spring is linear or progressive, no?

 

Springs cannot affect lateral weight transfer only C of G, trackwidth, and spung weight are a part of the equation. The sole purpose of springs is to support the body properly [set ride height].

People who sell aftermarket springs want you confused so they can sell their springs.

 

That's exactly why I say to leave the job of handling and restricting body roll to the sway bars and struts...

My car doesn't have the problem, so I don't have to deal with it, but I'm trying to remember what causes the nose to take a dive during a hard turn...
Because I have softer spring rates and have never run into those issues yet (crosses fingers)

EDIT - Trippin, it's in the springs. Progressive is the same as adding a helper spring for more comfort, and will usually be fine unless you are doing some hardcore driving.

 

This is a ridiculously simplified representation of weight transfer. If you're talking about the entirety of a car with no suspension exposed to one solid centrifugal acceleration, then yeah, that's all that matters. The real picture is much more complicated than that. A car is not a static system, it's a complicated damped spring mass system which will almost always be a transient state. To say that springs only set ride height is about as far from the truth as it gets. If this were the case, why aren't all cars suspension-less, with the wheels solidly connected to the frame to set ride height? The springs allow the wheels to follow bumps in the road and to isolate the driver and a ridiculously heavy piece of metal and machinery from these irregularities. It also allows one to tune the suspension for specific handling characteristics. I know, I know, before you say it, go karts have no suspension because they are so light, so don't go there. Springs also affect the amount of dive and squat a car encounters, the only other method of restricting this is z-bars, not struts or sway bars. Anyway, back to springs. Springs and sway bars determine how much roll stiffness a given end of your suspension (front or back) has, which determines how much of the total weight transfer that side of the suspension absorbs. You need to stop thinking of the car has one giant system, there are four corners on a car! Tuning each side of the suspension (front and back) will change the characteristics of the car. This kind of tuning cannot only be done with sway bars and struts! Sure, if the kid is looking for a quick and easy way to change roll stiffness, then sway bars are awesome. I plan on getting new sways for my car soon, possibly even making some. But please, to say that springs have no effect on suspension tuning is just absurd and is something that should not be spread.

ok, trust me, the outer wheel in a corner already has more than enough weight on it. One of the whole points of chassis (and suspension) tuning is to move some of the weight back onto the inner wheel for better overall traction. The more evenly the right and left tires can absorb the weight in a corner, the more traction the car will have available. This means that the car can take the corner that much faster. This has nothing to do with wheel speeds or anything like that. On the driven axle (the rear axle for all of our cars), wheel speeds can be a small concern, as the differential will transfer more torque to the inside wheel because that wheel has less traction. This is why we have limited slip differentials. Power delivery coming out the corner is now better with the LSD better because more torque is transfered to the wheel with the most traction, the outside wheel.

I honestly don't understand this sentence at all. Not trying to be mean, but really, I don't understand what you're saying. Lowering the center of gravity of the car will decrease the distance between the CG and the rollcenter of the suspension. This distance is the moment arm the weight of your car uses on the suspension system. The roll stiffness of your suspension resists this force. Decreasing this distance means the roll stiffness of your suspension has a larger effect on body roll, or the weight of the body of your car has a lesser effect on the suspension. Whichever way you want to say it, equal and opposite forces, you get it. Less body roll means less weight transfer means less weight for the outside wheel to absorb in a corner and more weight for the inner tire means better overall traction means faster cornering speed.

 

Wow that was a lot to absorb.

 

dofu why did you delete your post?

 

1st step is knowing knowing how to get 95% out of your stock suspension........ aka knowing how to drive. If you get that down, forum opinions will be pointless and you yourself will figure out what you need to do according to your driving style and needs.

 

The number one rule is to be an educated consumer! Be careful of anyone promoting or trying to sell you any aftermarket product, especially suspension, wheel, and tire MIRACLE SOLUTIONS.

Spend the time necessary studying these components [buy textbooks] and join and attend Professional Societies that have groups devoted to each area.

http://www.tiresociety.org/
They have a $50 student annual member grade

http://www.sae.org/technical/books/R-366

 

Springs may not affect how MUCH weight is transferred, but they can change the RATE of weight transfer, and change how the suspension geometry is affected by the weight transfer. Stiffer springs, for instance, result in quicker weight transfer & more even contact patches for the loaded and unloaded sides, which makes a car more responsive to the driver. Of course, the flip side is that it also takes more driver skill to control it. Shocks actually have a greater impact on rate of weight transfer than springs do.

Also, lowering springs can alter the C of G somewhat.

Here's a good link for understanding suspension alterations and their effects on handling:

http://www.turnfast.com/tech_handling/handling

 

The first two are a little off.

The hands down best coilover system for our car would be a custom Stance coilover setup

You also will want a front and rear chamber kit. For the money, SPL is the way to go for the front and SPC in the rear.

The best swaybars are the cusco or the 350evo swaybars. The hotchkis, stillen, and eibac are all pretty much the same, and well below par of both the cusco and 350evo swaybars

The RA bar is the best front strut bar

The RareJDM bar is yet to be proven. This would probably be the best rear bar, but I would have this bolted and welded into place, rather than just having it bolted into place.

Front and rear underbody braces would also work, as well as fender braces as well.

Lastly, remove excess weight, go for 18" light wheels with big meaty sticky tires w/ great sidewalls, and then go for more downforce.

OP, it all comes down to your plan for modding, but this should give you a better start than what was posted thus far. For a street/track setup, everything I have listed is "ideal" for insanely good handling

 

Wouldn't the need for camber correction be dependant on how low you set your coilovers?

And what exactly makes one set of sway bars superior to another? Most have overlapping setting across their adjustments to negate that line of reasoning so.... what's the reason again?

 

I'm curious about this also.

 

I think you're looking too deep into the job of the springs... we're talking about how the affect the handling if the car, quit trying to confuse people. As for corner balancing... it's great, it works, it is a must, but there's a reason why you need to redo everything if you lower your car more. The only thing I don't like about it is because it's a cheap fix... you're technically leaning your car to one side to fix the fact that the geometry is now f'd up.


First off, we don't have a true LSD in this car unless you put one in yourself. Either way, I'd rather rely on a good suspension rather than an LSD. One reason why I don't like telling people "the less body roll the better" is because they tend to think you're saying that you don't want any load transfer at all. If you don't have enough body roll, although you'd feel more g forces, you'll just get tons of understeer. And I shouldn't need to say that too much body roll is bad too. The fact that most suspensions already lowered the car, and most people get sway bars as a mod, I wouldn't use springs to reduce even more load transfer anymore on a dd or weekend track car.