Suspension tuning books
 

After playing with parts like coilovers, camber stuff, preload settings, and mca traction brackets, I've decided I suck at on-road suspension tuning and I'm tired of guessing everything. All of my limited experience in suspension tuning comes from offroad cars, trucks, and bikes. I ordered a copy of race car vehicle dynamics already. Are there any other books I should add to my reading list?

Youtube

On the real though. What makes you say you suck at suspension tuning? Are you looking for a particular outcome with your setup?

Go read a physics/mechanical engineering textbook or Wikipedia article. I'm serious. Or How to Make Your Car Handle by Fred Puhn is a good one too.

Did you buy the Ohlins from the known repeatable seller that posts here?
If so he is very helpful and may answer your questions and help you setup the car the way you want.
Waiting for your review when you finish... :)

RCVD is good but a little heavy.

How to make your car handle is good and approachable, but old.

There are some internet resources that are good, but a lot that are not good. I do like the OptimumG tech articles that are posted online, but they get deep into things that aren't relevant for our cars.

- Andrew

Do you have a tire temp probe? Going out and actually measuring will tell you a lot more about your alignment and suspension setup.

But as far as books go, RCVD does a pretty good job of covering it all. Gillespie's Fundamentals of Vehicle Dynamics is basically that but shortened and cut down to the handling specific sections.

For more basic info on setup and adjustment instead of the math and theory, try Carroll Smith's tune to win and maybe how to make your car handle by fred puhn (although this one is going on 40 years old).

Thanks for that book folks. I don't want to harrass someone about setups and waste their time. I'm not racing and I don't know enough about on road stuff to properly describe exactly whats going on. I feel like everytime I'm making one thing better, I make something else worse. I'm sure theres some happy medium out there that I haven't found yet. The suspension tuning knowledge is just something I think will be good to know. Whats the point of all my sweet adjustable stuff if I can't figure out exactly what I'm doing. For all I know, all of my problems are just driver error and I won't know what I'm doing wrong until I attend some driving classes.

Do tire probes work on wet tires? Most of my driving is in the rain. I'm not really going to pick up with suspension tuning again till spring. I like how the car handles now on ice and snow but was not a fan of my current settings on non slippery roads with my other tires.

Yes, but I didn't realize you weren't ever driving on tracks, which is where it is most useful. Ideal alignment is going to vary greatly depending on the roads you're driving on and the conditions. May help with pressures and handling balance but trying to drive fast on public roads especially when it's slippery is generally not going to turn out well.

It will be a while before a good review. On non-slick surfaces, I feel like stock struts and springs handled better. The largest improvements to me were front camber and zero toe. The toe was the biggest improvement, it felt like the the car kinda rotated around me while cornering...Not like drifting or anything, I just felt more confident cornering. The car rides nicer but I lost that sweet spot of cornering feel and it understeers. I blame my tuning, not the shocks....hence the quest for knowledge.

These are the ones with 4k/3k springs?

If so, I'd recommend stiffer rear springs, maybe 5k. 3k is softer than stock while your new front springs are stiffer. Tuning and adjustment can't make up for this fundamental imbalance.

RCVD is pretty much the go to bible, but like mentioned above, it's pretty technical.

Along with RCVD, I have these:
Engineer to Win - Carroll Smith
Chassis Engineering - Herb Adams
Inside Racing Technology - Paul Haney and Jeff Braun
The Racing and High Performance Tire - Paul Haney

Gleaned some working with Bob Riley too, and have his book but it is less technical, and more historical, but very good. "The Art of Race Car Design" - Bob Riley and Jonathon Ingram. If you don't know who Bob is, look up Riley and Scott, and Riley Technologies.

Also anything you can find online, youtube, and podcast wise, from Jeff Braun is going to be good. I think Rick Mayer has some stuff out there too (luckily he doesn't swear in his interviews, like he does in real life, LOL)

It is 5k front and rear.

Autocross to win is a good read.

We are out of topic but did you realize that your 5/5K Ohlins springs are 200mm while the "standard" 4/3K springs are 230mm length?

Ohlins spring 48020-07 (40Nmm): 65mm/230mm
Ohlins spring 48020-03 (30Nmm): 65mm/230mm

Ohlins spring 48010-11 (50Nmm): 65mm/200mm

I know they do it due to softer springs but 30mm is quite a lot of suspension (bump+rebound) travel difference!
In my humble opinion for road use and bad surfaces as yours and mine suspension travel is critical factor no matter the setting you have.
I set zero toe rear and some toe out front, steering response is little bit improved but when I fit the Ohlins I'll try some more toe out front and same camber front-rear, may be is my driving style or our slippery roads but rarely I felt my car understeering.

Spring length doesn't limit travel unless you preload to the point of coil bind or have a spring that is way too short. Thanks for all the tips on books folks.

Length of spring does not correlate 1:1 with the travel of the spring even using the same stiffness.

A 65mm ID 5k Eibach spring of 200mm length has 5.06" (128.5mm) of travel
A 65mm ID 3.5k Eibach spring of 230mm length has 5.93" (150.6mm) of travel
So a 30mm shorter spring that's 1.5k stiffer loses only 22.1mm of travel.

A 65mm ID 5k Eibach of 250mm length has 6.12" travel or 155.4mm so only a 26.9mm increase in travel despite adding 50mm of spring length.

Source:
https://eibach.com/de/en/products/mo...-spring-system

The way the spring is wound to achieve the stiffness is everything and every manufacturer is a bit different, wire diameter and coil spacings drive the springs performance and manufacturers aren't going to build every spring optimally they'll make a compromise to hit the ~$70 price point that people buy linear rate springs at. Spring travel isn't critical if you have a decent enough quality spring, to fully load that 5k spring and compress it 5"-6" you're looking at almost 2x the load that the car sees statically in the front, 3x for the rear.

Now I have to dust off some textbooks and see what that works out to in lateral g's... roughly speaking of course.

And? The stiffer spring will compress less and doesn't need to be as long.

Taking my numbers from the other thread the actual load on the spring at ride height is around 360kg. That compresses the 3k spring 120mm, and the 5k spring only 72mm. Turning that around, if you give the 5k spring 30mm of rear pre-load there will be only 42mm of droop, which I think might not be enough. Generally you want to have at least as much or more droop travel as bump (if your spring rates and travel will allow that). So I would take out some of that preload, maybe go somewhere in the 0-10mm range.

Yup. The preload helped with bottoming a bit but contributed to the post bottom-out buck in the rear. I think the shock is topping out and thats the buck I feel. Thats why I'm trying to learn more about tuning before continuing with my random, confused, and inexperienced tuning. I'm going to take everything to factory recomended settings after control arm install and play with it some more in the summer after I at least have some more idea of whats going on. I have as much fun playing with settings and seeing outcomes as I have fun driving anyways so no loss for me. I got this car as a toy and its serving its purpose well.

Of course 30mm length difference doesn't equate to absolute same travel difference except we talk about the same spring shape.
Number of coils/size/diameter/material play their role (http://www.reliablespring.co.uk/calculator.htm) but why Ohlins choose 4/3K springs at 230mm and available only in BRZ platform then?
I believe the softer springs can loaded easily to their limits as OEM suspension that works on bump stops.

PS: In your example the two 65mm 5K Eibach springs with 50mm length difference are same size/diameter/number of coils?
Otherwise we can't compare their travels.

Do you know the length of bump stop as to calculate the bump/droop for each different spring?

PS:I meant suspension travel favors bad roads

Can I just say, it’s awesome to see someone taking an academic approach to cars. I’m taking physics and auto shop at my school next semester for the same reasons hhaha.

LOL when I started tinkering with cars, "How to Make Your Car Handle" wasn't that old...

It's a great book to get a good foundation on suspension tuning. Most of the information, though old, is still applicable. I think it is outdated wrt tire technology, though.

Another good book is Race Car Engineering and Mechanics by Paul Van Valkenburg.

I'll have to go check out RCVD...