<VV> Springs and spring rates

[rbuckridge at comcast.net]

Ron, 

The bodies were all relatively stock. I say that because I don't know what shocks the other guys were using. I myself had Koni shocks and Kevin may have had the same. 



I do blame the springs for one reason, stock or even HD springs are fairly crude. Racing spring manufactures will tell you springs can vary as much as 5% in spring rate. Stock springs, I don't know how much they may vary, but can we now expect better? 



Playing with springs one day at the track, we installed a 250 or 275 pound spring in the right rear, instead of the 200 pound we usually ran. Driver goes back onto the track, does a few laps and doesn't like it. He comes in and tells me to put the 200 pound spring back in. 



Instead of putting in the dirty spring, I selected another 200 pound spring and installed that one. Driver goes back onto the track and comes back in immediately wanting to know what we did to the car. I told him about the clean vs dirty spring was the only change. We ended up putting the dirty 200 pound spring back into the car. The driver is now happy. 



It was at that point that I grabbed all our springs and went to my cousins shop and proceeded to measure all the spring rates. The spring, all racing springs for coil overs, were slightly different and sometimes as much as 15% on some of the older springs. 



I would add the same is true for shocks. Unless you dyno your shocks, you could end up putting them on the wrong side of the car. All shocks & all springs are not equal, but some are more equal than others. 



Bottom line is you need to put a number on all your springs & shocks to get the right balance. 



Roy - Bayshore 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ron" <ronh at owt.com> 
To: rbuckridge at comcast.net, "Virtual Vairs" <virtualvairs at corvair.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, December 2, 2009 12:58:13 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern 
Subject: Re: <VV> Springs and spring rates 

So how exactly the same were the bodies and suspensions?  Were the cars 
loaded the same?  Don't blame the springs before checking all of the other 
possible factors. 
RonH