[Ron Sutton]

Hi Ben,

Originally Posted by Ben@SpeedTech

Thanks for sharing that Ron. One of the reasons I'm deciding to go to Coilovers is so that I can play with/ factor in easy ride height and spring rate changes. The most recent mod to my car was cutting a bit of coil off the front springs and it went lower than I had wanted. In a world like this to me dealing with coil springs is a lot bigger pain than just swapping to coilovers.

Lance- Sorry to hijack your thread a little, just trying to learn from the things you're trying to sort out.

Ron- so in a car like Lance's or mine, being a daily driver that's "purpose built" and will see more track time than the average car, what type of range are we looking for in shocks? 2+ inches?
The short, smart azz answer is "More." If someone is going the high-front-travel/low-roll-angle suspension route, the more we can travel the front end ... to a point ... the better we can make the car turn. Like lance said, his shock was traveling under an inch before. Depending on the shock mounting location, it's about twice that at the wheel in most production cars. So he was traveling the wheel under 2" in dive. Now we're traveling the shocks over 2" & the wheels over 4" ... and it turns a ton better. Of course there is more to it than that. A lot more. But your question is about travel.

In my cars that have a real world ride height ... the best handling, meanest cornering machines are traveling the outside wheel 5"-5.5". The closer you can get a car to that, the better it "can" corner ... providing everything else in the package is right too. The farther you get away from that, the less cornering speed we're capable of carrying.



If I'm understanding you correctly you're going with a stiffer sway bar so he can maintain the height but lessen the roll, correct?
Yes ... correct. We're not looking to travel his car farther. His car handles amazing for a production G-body. It's because we got the front geometry right (including high caster), balanced the front to rear roll angles with spring & sway bar selection ... and went the high-travel/low-roll suspension route.

Because when we did this, the biggest Bar Lance could budget at the moment was a 36mm Camaro bar ... we matched the rear springs & ran it. It works "well" ... but it rolls too much. That means he is not getting the inside tires to work & grip as well as they could. So, by increasing the front sway bar size significantly ... and keeping the FLLD/RLLD the same with the correct stiffness of rear springs ... it will still handle balanced ... but utilize all 4 tires better & have way more total grip. Grip is cornering speed.

Do you feel like the car is close to where it needs to be other than that?

Oh boy ... that's pretty subjective. We can always go faster. The questions come down to each person's personal budget, goals, planned usage, etc.

I'm saying this slightly tongue in cheek ... but we can shave about 10 seconds off his lap times by cutting that body off his production chassis & putting it on a cutting edge, Track-Warrior tube chassis. But where does it stop? I think each person has to make that decision. Sometimes money makes that decision for us.

As far as Lance's current package goes ... without making any major modifications (cutting up) the car ... it only needs a few things:
* Bigger front bar & matching rear springs
* A little more caster & a little less camber
* Scaled to be balanced with just the driver
* New tires to replace his current shredded ones
* Once he get's it running flatter, he may be able to reduce the ride height "a little."

You'll notice I didn't mention more front travel. He can't get more without making major mods to the car. Plus how far it travels now ... around 4" ... is pretty sweet.