[DFORCERRT]

Doug,
There are complete books on this subject but I'll hit some high points. Springs are used to support the weight of the car and to help remove slow transistions, shocks are high speed devices. A stiff ride is not necessarily a good handling car, especially in a street car. You want to rate the springs for the weight of the car and although adjustable shocks are nice be careful to make sure that they are adjusted to the same position on each end of the car. Spring rate/spring length and ride height all have to be considered when installing springs. To long a spring compressed for ride height no longer becomes a spring. To stiff a spring and you get a choppy ride. After setting ride height it's a good idea to get the car corner weighted to even each wheels load to optimize handling or at the very least make sure that the spring is compressed the same amount. Sway bars initial set should be with the car on the ground with no preload, driven and then adjusted for handling adjustments. Now if you live in a state that has perfectly smooth race track roads you can get a lot closer to race car setups but if you live in the Northeast where the roads stink I'll leave you with a very important thought- to many people setup their street car with race car suspensions that are set way to stiff with little compliance for street road variations, impresses those who don't have a clue, but doesn't give you a good handling car for the street. The secret to a good handling street car is keeping the tire in contact with the pavement, not skating over the top of bumps. Set your car up with this in mind and you'll have a car that handles great and provides a great ride. Hope this helps-
Dave Force
Race Ready Technologies