Coilover obession - Why do you really want coilovers???

Spent Thursday at Brands Hatch finally using the new setup in anger. I must say I was very impressed with the pretty much all of the settings that Luke at Jabba had put on the suspension. The only exception being the rear antiroll bar which half way through the day I changed to the hardest setting after having some tuition and the instructor commenting that the car seemed to roll more than he had expected. The result was quite noticeable and the rest of the day the car seemed to get better and better. I really can't fault the Clubsports, even my wife has gotten used to the firmer ride (although we're going to raise it up a bit and soften it for the winter as I won't be going out on track again now until the spring.
A lot of people commented on how well set up the car seemed to be on track and also how fast it was (which is always nice). The only improvement I can imagine would really make any difference now might be an LSD as the only weakness is tracktion out of the corners even with the R888s on.
I'll try and post some more images later (I haven't posted any photos before so may take some time!)

Brands Hatch photos (hopefully)


Chap driving the 370z behind me managed to write it off in the tyres later in the day!

robertj said:

Brands Hatch photos (hopefully)

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There you go mate...

This is the sort of suspension thread I do read.

Gooner_Mike said:

There you go mate...

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Thanks. Getting the hang of it now!!

im waiting for my fully adjusteble D2 coilovers..herd good about them.the only bad thing is that they shuld arive in januari ..

antnee said:

Thought I would throw my 2 cents in.

I have had coilovers on my Ibiza for about 4months now, and I must of changed the ride height about a dozen times now with no problems at all. no need to have it re-tracked as if its changed by the same amount on both sides all parameters change by the same amount.

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And this is exactly the kind of thing the thread was started for. The above is as wrong as it's possible to be. Either people are poorly informed, advised by 'professionals' who lack any real knowledge or just plain lied to by a retailer to sell a product.

Before anyone goes anywhere near modifying wheels, tyres, suspension or brakes they should actually find out how things work. Unless you understand the following you need to be extermely careful and preferably get several independant opinions and professional advice:
Effect of front and rear toe
Camber
Caster
Effect of fast & slow bump / rebound
Spring rates
Unsprung mass
Corner weights
Roll centre
Slip angles
Stall angles
Tyre sidewall deformation & effect on contact patch

(The list goes on..)

And why people automatically think lower and stiffer suspension gives more grip and better handling is beyond me. Certainly in todays information culture it's surprising...

Needless to say, if you change one element of the suspension design you need to compensate for the effect on the others, and to be able to do that correctly, you must understand the way the system functions as a whole...

Jeeeesus James, that's alot I have to consider before buying coilovers, lol

You seem to know alot about this.
What's your back ground?
What can you tell us about our coilover set up if we gave you a list of our mods?
The above information could have only come from someone with some sort of motorsport or automotive engineering/designing back ground

Thats what you have to look at but generally the aftermarket manufacturers will have done most of the hard work for you. All you need to look at is adjusting coilovers for good corner weights generally speaking keeping front wishbones level at the resting point. Then alignment to settings which work for you personally and your driving eg toe camber caster, which you need to research properly. This becomes harder if your car doesnt have adjustable camber/castor etc and you may need to buy different wishbones or top mounts.

Guys TBH this is too much information to have to be considering for a car running coilovers on the road with occasional track days.
Before you consider all of the above you would have to fit solid mounts, slicks and a roll cage.

I firmly believe that there are more considerations to be taken into account than most people consider but all of the above is too much.

Corner weights are never going to be good for a road car. A purpose built track car perhaps, but a road car is a compromise. Less than 1% of road cars will even make it onto a track let alone make the crossover to track car.
Even corner weighting isn't an exact science, just because the car is corner weighted/corner balanced doesn't mean the car will handle how you like it. Even before you think about having this done you have to know the handling characteristics that you want out of the car.
To know this you have to have had some serious amount of track time or tuition.

I'll be getting my car corner weighted/balanced but TBH it's going to be two years before its worth my while as I'm still very new to the car on the track and will need a cage fitted before I spend hundreds on getting the weighting/balancing done and tweeked

TBH 99% of what you've said is of no interest to joe average, they buy coilovers because they want to adjust the height of their car and stiffen up the dampers for the odd trackday - that's it really. It might matter to a motorsport competitor but means nothing to 99% of us.

If you don't want to consider all the factors like corner weights etc then go out and buy yourself springs and shocks simple as. Unless you are purely doing this for looks and not driving your car fast anywhere. If pushing it on the road you want you car to be predictable and safe. Predictability does not come from random lowering amounts made by people who have no way of measuring the affect of what they have done.

I'm an Aerospace Engineer, but my dad built race cars, so i've been playing with this stuff since i was old enough to walk - a depressingly long time ago!

Devised a few modifications packages for cars before (and had one pinched by a well known business ) with great success but it's a hobby rather than a job. Looking at Titanium / superalloy component design at the moment which may have legs.

As to whether i could tell people exactly what to do, probably not since it depends on a combination of all the variables followed by assessments on a skid pan with a g-meter then onto a handling circuit. I could advise on what is likely to help, but it would involve a LOT of questions and a fair ammount of measuring on your part!

If you gave me all the below info for standard setup and after modified, i should be able to give you some pointers which would get you most of the way there.
Front & rear toe
Camber
Caster
Spring rates
Corner weights
Roll bar diameters
Suspension linkage lengths and angles to level
Track
Wheel & tyre sizes and weights

To do the job properly you'll still need to set final static camber on a skid pan. You'll then want to adjust the front and rear toe on the handling circuit.


What MikeH has said is partially correct - you need to ensure your corner weight are correct - for which coilovers are great - but that is only a small part of it. How does the suspension manufacturer know what wheels and tyres you're fitting? Change those and you need to change camber, caster and toe settings. Change for bigger wheel and you've increase your unsorung mass and need stiffer springs to compensate. It goes on.

I'm not saying these kits aren't good. I'm sure they are. But if you want your car to handle as well as it can (and not develop any nasty traits) you really do have to consider the whole package.

If not, places like Milbrook wouldn't exist...

M1KEH said:

If you don't want to consider all the factors like corner weights etc then go out and buy yourself springs and shocks simple as. Unless you are purely doing this for looks and not driving your car fast anywhere. If pushing it on the road you want you car to be predictable and safe. Predictability does not come from random lowering amounts made by people who have no way of measuring the affect of what they have done.

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What he said...


You should never confuse dropping the ride height for looks and adjusting for performance. They are mutually exclusive.

BTW corner weights make a MASSIVE difference to how any car handles, if anything it's more important on a FWD road car due the the behaviour of the suspension over surface imperfections.

Millions of people adjust their own coilovers and do trackdays etc. without worrying about corner weighting, slip and stall angles etc. and get on perfectly fine. It would be great to have the time and money to go to such lengths to set up their cars but 99.999% of us do not. We drive road cars.

Just saying.

M1KEH said:

If you don't want to consider all the factors like corner weights etc then go out and buy yourself springs and shocks simple as. Unless you are purely doing this for looks and not driving your car fast anywhere. If pushing it on the road you want you car to be predictable and safe. Predictability does not come from random lowering amounts made by people who have no way of measuring the affect of what they have done.

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That's a bit of a generalisation there bud.

How many people have got access to a company and a track to allow the corner weight/balancing to be done?
How many people could tell these companies what the car is doing wrong so that the company can change the settings to help with said issue.
I would doubt it 10% of people who even go to track days could actually give this information to the company to get the best out of the car.
How many people could afford to have this done?

Everyone has access to a company with specialists who will be able to set up corner weights for the car to allow a good starting point or 99% of people. The specialist should be able to inform the driver/ question the driver to get the info they need depending on use etc. All these costs should be considered before buying coilovers in the first place. So thinking about this then 90% of people who go to track days would most probably get faster lap times by leaving there car standard and investing in a racing school or similar and a good sticky set of tyres. I understand people who want to do this for looks, but anyone looking to make their car handle better should be willing to invest the money in getting there car setup once they have the parts fitted.

Willie said:

That's a bit of a generalisation there bud.

How many people have got access to a company and a track to allow the corner weight/balancing to be done?
How many people could tell these companies what the car is doing wrong so that the company can change the settings to help with said issue.
I would doubt it 10% of people who even go to track days could actually give this information to the company to get the best out of the car.
How many people could afford to have this done?

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Then don't do it!!!

Effectively what you're saying is because most people don't do it, it doesn't need to be done. I'm sorry but that's just nonsense. If most people aren't doing the job properly it simply means most people are wasting their money, and potentially risking the lives of themselves and their loved ones.

Plenty of places sell camber / caster gauges, not to mention corner weight scales.

All this rubbish about only being necessary for the track is, again, misinformed twaddle. The general road environment is far more challanging and needs a lot more development to get the suspension correct. Do you even know what happens when you fit wider wheel and tyres or what the difference is between fast and slow bump?

M1KEH said:

Everyone has access to a company with specialists who will be able to set up corner weights for the car to allow a good starting point or 99% of people. The specialist should be able to inform the driver/ question the driver to get the info they need depending on use etc. All these costs should be considered before buying coilovers in the first place. So thinking about this then 90% of people who go to track days would most probably get faster lap times by leaving there car standard and investing in a racing school or similar and a good sticky set of tyres. I understand people who want to do this for looks, but anyone looking to make their car handle better should be willing to invest the money in getting there car setup once they have the parts fitted.

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james.g said:

Then don't do it!!!

Effectively what you're saying is because most people don't do it, it doesn't need to be done. I'm sorry but that's just nonsense. If most people aren't doing the job properly it simply means most people are wasting their money, and potentially risking the lives of themselves and their loved ones.

Plenty of places sell camber / caster gauges, not to mention corner weight scales.

All this rubbish about only being necessary for the track is, again, misinformed twaddle. The general road environment is far more challanging and needs a lot more development to get the suspension correct. Do you even know what happens when you fit wider wheel and tyres or what the difference is between fast and slow bump?

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Guys just because I don't have the same knowledge or understanding about this topic as you don't try to make me look like a fool.

I have done a huge amount of research into this topic, I have spoke to motor sport companies and I have spoken to 'performance' companies.
The general public and forum member will trust the guys they know to give them good infromation.
I asked a well known company who has a racing car if they would coner weight my car and how much would it cost etc. I was told this was a waste of time on a FWD car as you would not feel the benefits but if I wanted it done it would cost £120 and take 3 hours, lol
Now I know this couldn't be further from the truth.
But perhaps instead of coming on here spouting engineering terms that most people have never heard about why not be useful and try and use your knowledge to help pepole, that is what forums are all about afternall, well for some of us.

I know corner weighting and balancing a car is the only way to get the best out of a cars handling.
I also know that on this forum, a Seat forum not a racing or track driving forum, there is very little knowledge on this subject. Especially from the sponsors.
I will be getting this done to my car but asI've said without the prior knowledge of how to drive the car on its limits on the track the time would be wasted.
I have spoken to two motor sport companies who will help me out once i have the track knowledge and understanding.

Also coilovers will allow us LHD designed car drivers to balance out the wrongly baised ride height thats dailled in from the factory, springs and shocks don't allow this to be done

We are trying to help those who wish to be helped by informing them of the real cost of fitting these things. Is this not a fair thing to do? I am by no means qualified to be telling people what setups they need on their cars, i just know the basics and that people without the knowledge have to be prepared to cough up the pennies if they wish to have suspension set up correctly, it's a hard truth and with the marketing which all the big companies use is hard to convince the general public it's not the best idea.