Coilover Tuning Questions

[Slide_Society]

Hello everyone,

I have KTS Coilovers installed on my 180 and would like to know about tuning coilovers. I know how to adjust ride height w/o pre-loading springs. I just would like to know the pro's and cons of lowering the perches lowering the spring would affect handling versus suspension travel.

Drifting.Touge.

[AceInhole]

Hello everyone,

I have KTS Coilovers installed on my 180 and would like to know about tuning coilovers. I know how to adjust ride height w/o pre-loading springs. I just would like to know the pro's and cons of lowering the perches lowering the spring would affect handling versus suspension travel.

Drifting.Touge.

I'm guessing I've already answered this on another forum, but here it is for redundancy:

For linear springs, the springrate stays the same regardless of preload. Preload will only help to shorten droop travel. In practice you don't want your drop limiter constantly bottoming out (shocks reaching full extension) while driving. I've experimented in the past with limiting droop to extremes up front to make up for the very limited travel in back on some coilovers, but ended up ditching the rear sway instead. So, from experience, there's no reason to run zero droop/ extreme preload.

My suggestion would be to set your perches so they're barely snug against the spring. If your shocks are good you'll never loose retention of the spring (rebound damping SHOULD keep everything together) even if they aren't "tight". However, you don't want to bottom out the piston on the floater (another piston seperating gas and oil in your monotube shock), and you don't want the droop limiter hitting the shaft seals while driving.