Quote:
Originally Posted by Infinity
I have seen some discussion on this forum regarding loss of suspension travel when reducing ride height on certain coilover sets. I believe some coilover sets are designed to prevent this by threading the whole damper body allowing ride height to be adjusted via the position of the damper in the mounting bracket (similar to the Ohlins Road & Track system).
1. Which coilover sets don't reduce suspension travel when lowering ride height?
2. How much does this matter?
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1. A lot of them.
2. Not as much as most think.
Separate ride height and preload adjustment can be a nice feature, but it needs to be implemented correctly. In general, these coilovers will have less
total stroke than a conventional single height adjustable coilover. You may end up with more bump travel at very low ride heights, but not necessarily more bump travel at medium to mild drops. A single height adjustable coilover trades bump travel for droop travel when you lower the car, but unless you are lowering by a large amount, you may end up with a lot of both. Droop travel is still important, and depending on spring rates and if you're running helper/tender springs (and you usually should), you'll almost always have more with a single height adjustable coilover.
My recommendation has been that if you're slamming the car or want to go real low, separate ride height and preload can be very useful (with exceptions like the Ohlins for this car that don't like to go low). At a 1 inch drop though, you may actually have more bump travel with a conventional single height adjustable coilover. It does depend on the coilover. And you can run lowering top mounts (perhaps from Raceseng) to make up for some of the difference if you do want to go real low.
One thing to keep in mind is that MOST of the time (but not always), separate ride height and preload adjustment is a cost saving measure marketed as a must-have feature. This is why you see it on the lookalike low-end coilovers from China pretty consistently. They use one damper cartridge for multiple vehicles/applications, and slap on different upper and lower mounts. Done, easy. On the other hand, coilovers on the higher end of the spectrum (JRZ, MCS, AST, Bilstein motorsport, and so on) do not use separate ride height and preload adjustment.
You certainly could have a dual height adjustable coilover with helper springs and loads of both bump and droop travel, but I have not seen that in person.
- Andrew