At donnington kit car show i was talking to dampertech that sell the gaz stuff and was wondering wheather to buy some for my locost but i didn't. I have just rung dave at damperetch and placed a order for some he has reduced the price for 4 dampers and springs to £250 all in!! that is well cheap for some suspension, as i remember he had a offer running for £270 in kit car magazine.

I hope this helps people that are building theirs on a budget. like me!!!

[Edited on 24/9/03 by ainsml]

Excuse me for the blatant add, but, the shock kit i sell is still cheaper at £220 all in!

Kind regards,

Darren

But do your dampers carry a 3 year warrenty and are fully rebuildable. also they are not damping adjustable so how do you cater for the different engines other people may want to run !!

pays your money and takes your choice i guess. if mine turn out to need more damping i'll just wedge a few dead cats into the spring.

Why dead ones ?

i got another one the other day. such an odd feeling that bump as you bounce over them...

should teach them the green cross code...

I have no connection with Darren at GTS (dozracing) but can vouch for the quality of his damper and spring kit. They have adjustable seats which will cater for differing engines etc and can accept different springs for extreme cases. I have adjustable dampers (Koni's) on my road car and have never changed them from the default setting as it works just fine. Just one more variable to get wrong IMHO, unless you are into serious racing and have the experience and equipment (data loggers etc) to tune the suspension properly.

HTH,
Craig.

thats true, it'd take all day to work out where to put the cats, how many, how long dead etc. not a very precise science i suspect. i got some of darrens the other day, no mention in the instructions about cats or dogs.

i reckon they'll do fine as they are.

if my ball joint ever arrives then i'll have the front end bouncing, eh doz?!? lol

JoelP

Do you have a good close up pic of the GTS shocks?

Cheers

Nick

Also has anyone got a car on the road using GTS shocks?

Impressions?

Cheers

Nick

Nick,
Take a look on my website in the June 2003 section and you will see three photo's from various angles and also other pictures of the units on the car. I've not got it on the road yet as you will see but for road use I very much doubt that there is much to choose from a damper perspective anyway. The adjustable seats and ability to change the springs should be good enough for most people (IMHO of course)

By the way, in case some folks haven't noticed yet, you can get my website by clicking the "www" button below this posting.

Cheers,
Craig.

Gotta agree with Craig.

I've got Darrens GTS shocks and am pleased with the finish.

Car not on road yet, but as far adjustment is concerned - my bike has about 1/2 million different settings and I've left it as it came out of the box. And it's fine.

Craig, how's the build? Your site is a little behind the times

ATB

Simon

Craig

Good pics and the shocks do look well made.
I think a purchase may be made!

Cheers

Nick

quote:

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Originally posted by Simon
Gotta agree with Craig.

car not on road yet, but as far adjustment is concerned - my bike has about 1/2 million different settings and I've left it as it came out of the box. And it's fine.

---

I've got the GTS shock (Dozracing), I bought them before the big price drop and I'm still impressed with the quality. My car isn't on the road yet so I can't really say what they are like on the road.

I have pics of them on my website if you care to take a look.

Hi guys,

Thanx for the votes of confidence! Just when i was getting really down about the long nights and threatening bank letters that it takes to invest in and build these damn shock kits, at least i know its appreciated when people eventually get them.

I know it fairly obvious that im massively biased towards promoting them, but, i honestly believe that for the majority of people they are a better bet than the normal opposition.

I don't offer a 3 year warranty and they are not rebuildable for the simple reason that i don't need to. There is nothing about them to go wrong that will need them to be rebuildable. They are made by an OEM supplier who will expect them to last 100,000 miles or so on a Mercedes or BMW road car. They are made to my specifications and the mounting details and spring mounts are my design to allow them to fit Locosts. The damper valving is derived by me by road testing Locosts and using my experience. The same experience in dampers that the likes of M. Schumacher have put to good use in Grand Prixs.

Sorry for sounding like a broken record to those who get involved in these threads each time it comes up.

The Gaz shocks you have will be ok for a couple of clicks either side of baseline for your car. Basically they have a massive range of adjustment so they can be used on lots of different cars. The adjustment is not fine enough for you to effectively fine tune your car for driving style etc.. If you want that level of performance and adjustment you should go for a damper costing around £200 each from a high performance damper manufacturer. Also you might want to look at a well used Gaz, Avo or Spax steel damper after about 6 months or so you see the old red devil coming through and sticking your threaded collar. Whereas an aluminium bodied damper or one with an aluminium thread will not get this problem.

Also after the same sort of time period see whether you'll still be able to turn the adjuster knob, my bet is it'll be jammed up too.

Most of these comments are based on experience with road car dampers over the last 8 years. The Gaz and Avos use common components with the Spax damper. They all stem from the same design as anyone who knows the life story of each of these companies will tell you. In fact to add to it the new aluminium damper that MK sells (Protec) is the next development in the Spax story. I work day to day with the ex technical director of Spax and we share stories every day of the problems encountered with this damper architecture. Its the fundamental reason why Nitron has stopped making adjustable twin tube dampers and geared up to move into the mono tube gas damper market. The product is fundamentally much more reliable for road use and has much better performance characteristics.

ALl that said if to sleep at night you feel that you simply must have an adjustable (damping) damper then the Gaz is the option to go for. Its almost identical (you can swap bits between them) to the Avo and Spax yet you get them for a much better price.

Dave at Dampertech must be pulling his hair out, i know how much he pays for them and at £250 delivered he is never going to be a wealthy man.

Kind regards,

Darren

As dampers seem to be the topic of the day I thought I would chip in with my contribution to try and dispel some of the c**p that is being written.

I have worked for the past 30 years for major car manufacturers. A good proportion of that time has been spent in chassis engineering particularly in ride and handling.

When developing new vehicles all car manufacturers spend a considerable amount of time and money in developing damper and spring packages in order to optimise each vehicle. This work often takes 2 or more years. The result is that for every model the damper has a specific damper characteristic known, as a “setting” this setting is specific to the spring rate. For example the BMW 3 series has over 20 different damper settings covering the model range.

It is impossible to have one damper setting that will cover all the locost variants. Adjustable dampers were developed by SPAX in order that individual could have the opportunity to adjust his dampers to match different suspensions and driving styles. For example I have seen spring rates used on locost cars between 225 & 400 LBS. A set up for road use is different to track use. In my opinion anyone using fixed damping would be unable to achieve the optimum performance given the variants in spring rates, engine weights and suspension geometry etc.

Without the ability to adjust the damping you will never know if you have achieved the optimum ride and handling package for your vehicle. I tend to agree with stu16V & Sid Bridge that adjustable dampers at lease give you the options. Ask Robin Hood owners who have fitted fixed damping “Zeemer rides” to save money how many of them have eventually had to buy adjustables. I am not bias towards any of the damper manufacturers as I have used them all in the past. If Dampertech are doing a set of Gaz for £250 inclusive seems a very good price to me but in the end you pay your money and take your choice.

I am not bias towards any of the damper manufacturers as I have used them all in the past. This is my personal opinion and you will make up your own minds!

Cheers
brown paper bag!

Syd/BPG,
Fair comments and quite enlightening so thanks for that. I agree that having lots of adjustment can be a good thing but I'm sure you guys will agree that it can also be a bad thing. I'd be one of the first to say that my experience is pretty limited when it comes to building cars despite having a reasonable understanding of the basic principles. Therefore if I was asked what spring rate and damping rate I wanted then I wouldn't have known where to start.

I might do a quick calculation and divide my car's corner weight by the number of inches of travel between full droop and ride height and hey presto I have the spring rating (maybe...) God knows how I would calculate the required damper valving...

My point is that Darren of GTS has designed a coilover unit for the Locost market which looks good, is well made, seems to be popular and is reasonably priced. Yes my Locost is non-standard (isn't everyone's in some way) but it isn't going to be a million miles away from a standard Locost in terms of the fundamentals. Thus I believe that Darren's best efforts will be much better than mine when it comes to damper/spring selection. That lets me worry about the other 9999 things which stand between me and a road-legal car. Maybe 12 months AFTER I get the car on the road I might consider how I can improve it but for now I believe that I have received a very good value set of coilovers and am more than happy.

Cheers,
Craig.

ps. Syd, I don't want to appear defensive as I agree with what you have said above and I think you will most likely agree with my reasoning here too. I just wanted to explain my reasoning a bit in the hope that any newbies reading this might gain some insight into the compromises which we often have to make when building a Locost and not get bogged down with detail at too early a stage. "Paralysis By Analysis" as one of my old school teachers used to say.

quote:

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I don't offer a 3 year warranty and they are not rebuildable for the simple reason that i don't need to. There is nothing about them to go wrong that will need them to be rebuildable. They are made by an OEM supplier who will expect them to last 100,000 miles or so on a Mercedes or BMW road car.

---

quote:

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They are made to my specifications and the mounting details and spring mounts are my design to allow them to fit Locosts.

---

quote:

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The damper valving is derived by me by road testing Locosts and using my experience.

---

quote:

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The same experience in dampers that the likes of M. Schumacher have put to good use in Grand Prixs.

---

quote:

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The Gaz shocks you have will be ok for a couple of clicks either side of baseline for your car. Basically they have a massive range of adjustment so they can be used on lots of different cars.

---

quote:

---

The adjustment is not fine enough for you to effectively fine tune your car for driving style etc..

---

quote:

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If you want that level of performance and adjustment you should go for a damper costing around £200 each from a high performance damper manufacturer.

---

quote:

---

Also you might want to look at a well used Gaz, Avo or Spax steel damper after about 6 months or so you see the old red devil coming through and sticking your threaded collar.

---

quote:

---

Whereas an aluminium bodied damper or one with an aluminium thread will not get this problem.

---

quote:

---

Also after the same sort of time period see whether you'll still be able to turn the adjuster knob, my bet is it'll be jammed up too.

---

You know, this debate is far too civilised and constructive with no apparent hostility and far too much politeness.

Someone give Rorty a shout and we can see if you can get him and Syd to start another classic argument (sorry, debate)

Only kidding!
Cheers,
Craig.

Sorry Craig (et al) but it does peeve me to see folk give duff info on rival products to try and generate sales, who themselves seem to be misinformed on the basics of suspension requirements.

I have never designed a shock absorber in my life, but I do know that it is IMPOSSIBLE to have a shocker that will give the best performance, on all of the variations of our cars. Period.
As stated earlier, manufacturers alter shocker valving for different variants of the same model! And yet the geometry of the suspension stays equal. The difference in weight from basic to top flight model percentage wise is probably far less than the difference of the weight between lightest and heaviest of locost variants. The suspension design is the same. And they assume Mr Average will be driving it, and for the majority of the models at least, it will never be going anywhere near a race track.

30 sheets is a small sacrifice for a reasonable handling car, no matter how you have deviated from the book (as long as the other fundementals are right, of course)......

Then again, the Rover V8 is no heavier than a Pinto...

What spring rates did you go for craig? Are the damper rates matched to the spring rates?
Have you done much since your last diary update, I'd be very keen to see how you are doing. We just got rid of our Sierra.. now to "do" the cortina...

My spring rates are 8 inch 275lb/in on the front and 7 inch 175lb/in on the back. The dampers are an unknown quantity to be honest but I am assured by Darren at GTS that they are fine for the V8. I appreciate all that has been said on this matter and agree in principle that you can't get a damper for all purposes but it will undoubtedly do fine to get the thing rolling. As you say the Rover V8 is lighter than a Pinto due to it being all alloy.

I have made a good bit of progress since my last website update but most of it is invisible (seam welding, scavenging etc). I intend to update my website after next weekend as I should have got all the other little jobs like replacing anti-freeze in my road car and stuff like that which has to be done before winter sets in. Then hopefully I can start looking at the car seriously again... I should make a good start next Saturday when I should be receiving my V8 engine

I also need to get my CAD design up to date so that I can design things before actually making them.

Cheers,
Craig.

At the end of the day my shocks are to be the officially recommended shock kit in the 3rd edition of the book.

There is also a substantial section in there that details a test session where all the main suppliers products were tested (including AVO two way aluminium bodied) back to back using an experienced test driver. The results are published in the book, and all i will say is that i wouldn't make mention of it if mine hadn't come out very well in the results.

As an aise to all this chatter about everyones favourite subject (can a statistition figure out if there is another topic that receives more replies?) i have been asked by Which Kit to do an article on shocks. As its not a Locost specific article i shall be keeping things more general and away from the pros and cons of my shocks over others. I want to do it as an educational peice. Now all the articles i have written on the subject before have been about racing dampers which in some respects is easier because everyone is only interested in outright performance.

As you are the types of people who read the kit car mags, what answers do you want to what questions? As yet i haven't read an article on shocks in a kit car mag that really outlines how they work, what the terminology is etc.. So i guess i should start with that, but, then what?

Kind regards,

Darren

Forgot to say, that i have developed new valving and sizes for IRS and De Dion cars and Sierra based cars. Primarily because i'm going to be launching a Sierra based single doner car that has IRS and or Dedion as an option.

If you want to play games with ride height then of course you can with mine, and if you want super cheap no frills you can have mine in the non adjustable (ride hieght) form for £180.

Questions

1, What is the logarithmic curve of the rebound structure on the alloy content in the springs, and does the velocity of the damping fluid through the valve reach a harmonic with the vortex around the body of the damper once you reach geostationary orbit?

2, Do they drive good


(Don't bother replying to question 1!)

Mark,
the sad thing is that I got half way through your sentence in (1) above before I realised it was a pi$$ take... Doh!

Doz,
I'd be interested in a good general description of how they work and how you match spring characteristics with the damper characteristics. Also, practical stuff like how do you determine the best ride height point as a point between max bump and rebound. I would basically like the "black magic" to be lifted from the subject so that we can all make informed decisions about the damper characteristics rather than relying on other people who may or may not know what they are talking about and in any case a rarely building exactly the same car anyway. As an example, I know how camshafts work and could fairly intelligently order a Cam to suit a particular engine and usage. I can't yet do the same for a damper and spring.

By the way, do you know when the 3rd edition is due out?

I hope this helps,
Craig.

i got as far as harmonics before i realised! reminded me of that line in hitchhikers guide about eddies in the space time continuum. whats he doing there? anyway...

quote:

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Originally posted by dozracing
At the end of the day my shocks are to be the officially recommended shock kit in the 3rd edition of the book.

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quote:

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There is also a substantial section in there that details a test session where all the main suppliers products were tested (including AVO two way aluminium bodied) back to back using an experienced test driver. The results are published in the book, and all i will say is that i wouldn't make mention of it if mine hadn't come out very well in the results.

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quote:

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Originally posted by pbura
Just for a laugh, once I saw someone selling these on eBay as a Locost coilover:

http://www.surpluscenter.com/item.asp?UID=2003030810355745&catname=&qty=1&item=28-1342

Let's see you beat that, Darren

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quote:

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Originally posted by JoelP
why the hell are they so cheap? thats less than £15. and the spring rate is near enough right innit?

---

I HAVE BEEN ASKED BY SEVERAL PEOPLE TO VIEW THIS FORUM TO CHECK THE ON GOING SAGA OF THE DAMPERS.

I HAVE WORKED IN DAMPER FOR OVER 30 YEARS. I DONT WANT TO SOUND BIG HEADED BUT THERE IS NOT ALOT I DONT KNOW ABOUT THIS SUBJECT. I AM THEREFORE REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO DARRENS FORTH COMING ARTICLE. MAKE SURE IT IS FACT AND NOT BULL S**T AS I WILL SCRUTINISE EVERY WORD.

AS I AM HERE I MIGHT AS WELL REMIND YOU THAT I CAN DO A SET OF GAZ SPRING AND DAMPER £250 INC AND YOU CAN HAVE ANY SPRING RATE YOU WANT.

P/S DARREN YOU DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH I PAY FOR MY DAMPERS BUT THEN AGAIN I WILL NEVER WORK WITH M .SCHUMACHER !!!

IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A FIXED RATE DAMPER TO YOUR SPEC I CAN DO THEM AT A £10 EACH FROM OE MANUFACTURERS.
THE NUMBER TO RING IS 01709 703992

BEST REGARDS,
DAVE

For those of you interested in the maths behind shocks you'll find a paper written by A G Thompson enlightening. Its a simple formula for optimum damping. Not simple to most people as it takes up the width of the A4 sheet, but, its simple in comparison to the 8 pages of A4 that my formula took up when i did my final year degree project on 4 degree of freedom car model. As you all will know a single degree of freedom model with damping gives you a polynomial equation to solve. A two degree of freedom model gives you a polynomial equation to the power 4, a 4 degree of freedom model takes this up to a power of 16 thats where the 8 pages of equation come in. We should all remember from A level maths, or degree first year how to derive a polynomial equation, but, it takes a series amount of computing power to solve one to the power of 16. Basically this is what you start to get into if you want be able to calculate the optimum damping for a car. The problem is that it then only calculates the coefficient of damping you want, and doesn't tell you how to split that between bump and rebound or how to arrange the low and high speed characteristics either.

But for our current argument on the requirement for fixed or adjustable rate dampers to take into account build variations due to engine mass it will be good enough. I'll post another reply later with mathematical results of a spec. car and then one with variations of plus or minus say 20% front sprung mass. Then we'll see what the percentage difference is in the damping requirement and you can all then make a judgement as to whether my fixed rate shocks can be expected to work well on a range of different builds. Dave can tell us what the percentage change is per click of adjustment on the Gaz and we can decide what extent of the range of adjustment on the Gaz's is useful to us Locosters. That has to be fair, let the numbers do the taking not the bull shit.

Syd. If you want to read my previous texts you need to get a back copy of Racecar Engineering that includes my article on the blow off valved damper that we developed for touring car races so they could kerb hop more aggressively. Or a back copy of Race Tech where there was an article on the fundamentals of High performance gas mono dampers. You could also try getting aback copy of the 750MC bulletin where i described how to setup a racecars shocks and tune them and cure handling problems. If thats nmot enough you could perhaps read the book on racecar springs and dampers published by RaceTech on which myself and a colleague contributed. You might also be interested in another RaceTech article that featured an article about the Lateral Acceleration Sensitive Damper i invented. There may be other articles in various mags about things like the 4 post test rig that we designed and developed in house.

Also in the States there are several articles describing the suspension system we designed for the Shelby Series One car.

The last time i spoke with Martin Keenan, was when he called me to discuss me supplying him with shocks for all the Indy's. He insisted that he wanted to only sell adjustable shocks. I'm not sure why as he has a car thats well sorted for fixed rate ones! Any way i suggested he go for Gaz's. His reponse was that he had been using them for a long time as a regular supplier to the Indy, but, had fallen out with them over issues that i didn't ask about and wanted desperately to find any other source of dampers apart from Gaz. Not sure what his current situation is, as the kit car mags all carry ads for Gaz's but i believe he moved on to Rod Avons (AVOn) new damper company, Protech. Protech have launched an all ally damper with improved valving and adjustment mechanism (with a little help from their friends no doubt) with the express desire to force Gaz, and if possible Avo out of business. No love loss in the damper world i can tell you.

Dave, If you buy an OE shock (bare in mind it has to be valved to suit a Locost which takes development and testing) for £10 fixed rate, add a spring platform, threaded sleeve and threaded lower platform, anodise them, and stick a spring on it, add VAT, add shipping from the OE manufacturer and a 1/4 of your normal profit margin, you'll end up selling them for £200 a set like me. You should have done that years ago between Nitron and I we have sold nearly 500 shocks around the world, 300 since last christmas. Not a single return or complaint, apart from a guy who i accidently sent 3 rear shocks to and only 1 front. But, to do that be prepared to put up at least £7000 up front. Now i did it to prove a point and to provide what Locosters were in need of, a damper of good quality, reliability yet significantly cheaper than the competition. I never set out to do it as a business, Nitron were doing that, i inherited it. I took it on because of the number of people who were disappointed that Nitron were going to stop selling them, when they had set their heart on buying a set. As i felt responsible for kicking it off in the first place i took it on.

If you buy a set of transit ball joints from me it actually costs me about 40p. That was a mistake i meant to offer them at cost. If you buy a set of bodywork from me, i make about £10-£20 if that, i do it to provide work to a great GRP man i know.

My site provides me with nothing more than beer money, but, the Locost community, of which i am one benefits. If i can use my contacts to provide good quality parts at the lowest possible prices then why shouldn't i pass it on to all the other people who are in the same positon as me, trying to build a sportscar they otherwise couldn't hope to afford.

Dave, scrutinise the article all you want, they'll be no bull poo in it. And just before you get really upset with me, i would estimate that at least a dozen of your sales this passed 10 months will have been as a result of me passing interested parties on to you. The reason is that my opinion is that if you want an adjustable shock for all the right reasons you should be prepared to spend £200 each on them. If you want to cut corners and have the knob to twiddle then there is nothing to choose from the Gaz, Avo and Spax except that Gazs are by far the cheapest. To me if you must have the adjustment and really can't find the money then go for the Gaz.

Update.

After some quick maths.

20% change in engine weight results in 10% change in natural frequency, and 8% change in damping coefficient.

Now most road cars operate between 0.4 and 0.5 coefficient of damping, thats a band of 20%. So we are well within the band that road car manufacturers work within.

I'd be interested now to see what the increments are on the adjustable dampers. On fine racing damper adjustments you would have a range of +/- 50% at least in 14 clicks. Thats 7% per click, so not a lot of the range will be used allowing for engine mass difference of 20%.

The difference on race dampers is how you can tune the characteristic (ie where the damping forces are in the speed range) without necessarily altering the toal amount of damping of for that matter the coefficient of the range of operation. To do this you need individual control over high and low speed damping in both bump and rebound, and all these must be seperate from one another.

Kind regards,

Darren

quote:

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20% change in engine weight results in 10% change in natural frequency, and 8% change in damping coefficient.

---

Be interesting to see how ours ends up with the hefty Beemer 3.5 six in it...Iron block, alloy head and gearbox...

Not light and very long...

It's turning into another of those 'who is the cleverest?' arguments.

Surely this is all about compromise.

I would have thought that the entire concept of a locost build is one of compromise. We could all spend tens of thousands of your earth pounds on exactly the right trick bit for every component but we don't 'cos must of us are trying to build a fun car for not much cash beacuse:
a) We want a good handling fun sports car.
b)We want to do it cheaply.
c)We want to have done it our selves.

Further to this most of us are building cars that deviate relatively little from standard.

Surely if people want to save some money and get their car on the road and just enjoy every day road driving then a fixed rate damper is a perfectly reasonable compromise considering the other many compromises we have already had to make.

I suspect the reason many people want adjustable dampers is beacuse they think they should and beacuse it is another tick on the spec sheet - not beacuse they need them. How many people buy adjustable dampers but never adjust them? Loads I suspect.

Just remember we are all individuals building our own thing in our own way and if fixed rate dampers suit some people than that is fair enough as long as they understand the compromise they are making.

Like I say some of us just want to have fun at a budget price and shouldn't feel pushed into having to play at being racecar engineers by those who want to do that them selves (or are racecar engineers!).

Garbled I know but just wanted my 2p.

Just an afterthought -

Didn't the father of all locosts (and destroyer of many relationships), the great Ron Champion, (May grease be upon him) not just go and buy a pair of non-descript old coil overs from an autojumble without giving a seconds consideration to bump rebound, or indeed anything else.

We should show our faith in the great locoster and do likewise.

Phil

Stu,
I think you are pushing it a bit now matey.

Most Locosters I expect will be in the 550Kg to 650Kg region with very few below 500Kg's and an unfortunate minority above 700Kg's. Taking 600Kg's as the average (say) the +/-20% rule gives limits of 480 and 720Kg's which will surely cover all but the most extreme examples.

As Darren says, adjustable dampers might have very large increments and very few clicks and unless you know what the variance between clicks is then how can you hope to set things up correctly? Out of interest did you get a spec sheet with your dampers showing the adjustment factors?

Cheers,
Craig.

quote:

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Further to this most of us are building cars that deviate relatively little from standard.

---

I agree that one shock won't fit all but I still contend that the greatest percentage of builds fall within a small standard deviation and that one shock will still fit many as long as people are aware that it is a compromise and not a 'perfect fit'.

Phil

i would also add that on a road car you still get a compromise, ie soft enough for the pot holes and hard enough for good smooth corners. my subaru wasnt perfect for either, quite stiff on bumps but still more roll then wanted both on constant corners and alternating corners.

i myself would rather have perfect smooth roads, low tyres and NO suspension at all, then atleast the car goes where you point it.

effectivly as i understand it, more weight needs a stronger spring, which then itself requires a stiffer damper to control it. As such its also a matter of wanting a stiffer spring option, as the spring may be wrong for the car anyway. tuning the damper either way will make the ride more or less complient but wont make up for the spring rate being wrong.

so really, assuming darrens product gives an acceptable ride in the first place, its the springs we should worry about for different weights.

or is that bull? u tell me...

[Edited on 9/10/03 by JoelP]

and as an afterthought, if you know your car will be to either extreme, and think you may need a different spring to darrens standard ones, then you will need adjustables to cope with the new spring, unless you dont mind a compromise.

most people know roughly what end weight theyre heading for...

Stu,
I wasn't reading it like that. If he has designed it for 600Kg's then a 20% variance is either 720Kg's or 480Kg's. If he designed it for 480Kg's(unlikely) then obviously 720Kg's is +50%

Even +/- 10% on 600Kg's would be 540-660Kg's which would cover most locosts anyway.

Cheers,
Craig.

But what happens when you put your fat girlfriend in it and luggage on the back for a dirty weekend.....Just the passenger weight (approx 70 kilo) is gonna add 12% or so to an average locost.......

atb

Steve

Relatatively slim, no girfriend, locost compatible wifey

quote:

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Originally posted by craig1410
Stu,
I wasn't reading it like that. If he has designed it for 600Kg's then a 20% variance is either 720Kg's or 480Kg's. If he designed it for 480Kg's(unlikely) then obviously 720Kg's is +50%

Even +/- 10% on 600Kg's would be 540-660Kg's which would cover most locosts anyway.

Cheers,
Craig.

---

Syd,
I'm sure Darren will speak for himself but I would expect, since I am building a de-dion car, that the shock absorber dimensions would be different for de-dion compared with live axle. Same for IRS. In my case I am making my own de-dion setup so I bought the shocker kits from Darren before starting to build the suspension around them. However, this did result in a less elegant design than if I had designed the shockers around the axle.

Just a thought!

By the way Syd, who did you get your shockers from and how much did they cost if you don't mind me asking. Also, are they 'book' locost size?
Cheers,
Craig.

I beg your pardon Syd, he did say new valving as well as new sizes (should have read that before responding really...Doh!)

I guess that unsprung weight might be the other significant difference between IRS Live and De-Dion then eh? That would affect rebound most I'd expect as there wouldn't be as much unsprung weight to pull the wheel back down. Does that make sense?

Cheers,
Craig.