Coilovers : different size front/rear

[voucht]

Hi,
Here in Sweden, we have SFRO, which is the equivalent of your IVA in UK. They publish a manual, and you have to respect their regulations if you build a car.
One of them is that the shock absorbers (let's write "s.a." to be shorter) have to be set at a maximum angle of 20° to 30° (I guess they mean from the vertical axis).

The roadster is designed with s.a. at a 45° angle, so here in Sweden, we need to modify the position of the s.a. brackets to get a max. angle of 30°. As the s.a. will more "vertical", it will also have to be shorter (if we want to keep the wishbones and uprights as they are, and modify the design as less as possible).
Do you follow me until here ?

For more info, I publish the study I made of the different options (but certainly not the only ones) on my blog with a lot of illustrations. But let me warn you : it is quite long and can be extremely boooooring...

http://vouchtroadster.blogspot.com/2...s-to-meet.html

Anyway, after calculations, 3D simulations and so on, it appears that in order to make the smallest modifications and do it the easiest way, the front coilovers will have to be 12'' inches long, and the rear ones will have to be 11'' long.

My question is : do you see any problem having different lengths of s.a. at the front and at the rear ?

Thank you for your comments and opinions about that.

[Jimmyd]

Short answer, for IVA different length no problem, for your version no idea!!

[voucht]

Thank you for your comment.
Why wouldn't it be ideal good for my version ? Any technical reasons ?

[voucht]

Thank you Phil, very interesting. I haven thought about the risk to bend the lower front wishbone if I move the lower bracket inward.
But anyway, I can't use 13'' coilovers if I move the front and rear top bracket as you tell me : they will be too long. Do you think I should recalculate to see if I can use the same length at the font and at the rear (which I think will be 11'')?

[voucht]

Thank you very much Phil, that is what I'm gonna do.
I also had a look at the Robin Hood, and the solution on the "zero" is quite seductive, as it also combine the head light support. I will try to work in this direction.
Thank you.
Sylvain

[Tilly819]

also remember that the spring rate change with respect to the sin of the angle

example:

front spring rate is 350lbs/in IIRC @45 deg
if the spring were vertical it would need to be (350xsin45 = 247.5lbs/in)

to find the new spring rate we can take the vertical rate and apply a new angle of 60deg (measured from horizontal, dont use 30 you have to measure up from horizontal not down from vertical)

247.5 / sin60 = 285.7lbs/in

this is inly the case if the outboard pivot point stays in the same place and you move the inboard pivot point.

if you move the outboard pivot closer to the chassis then the leverage effect it has on the shock with be much greater and thus require a heaver spring rate and will also make it more lightly that you will bend or worse snap a wishbone.

example if the outboard pivot for the shock is 400mm away from the chassis pivot for the wishbone it is connected to and it supports 100KG if you half this distance you double the load. so now at 200mm it has a 200KG load and so on... this is very bad practice

making the shock more vertical is a very good thing and can be done by moving the inboard end of the shock. the outboard end of the sock should be as far outboard as possible so as to reduce the bending moment on the wishbone. wishbones are not designed to take bending loads, they are designed to take load in tension and compression.


hope this is of some help

tilly

[Tilly819]

no problem.

tilly

[baz-r]

i would move the tops out on the fronts and use a shorter shock and spring
at the rear if you move the top out you may create a clearance issue with the rear wheel so you could modify the top suspension arm to take a bottom shock mount but i would be up rating it to take more load
hope that helps