Suspension For A Ke70

[love ke70]

sweet

thanks :wink:

[rjenman]

Just out of interest, King lows to suit a KE70 are listed as AE86 springs.

 

I own a set but havn't got my hands on a spring compressor to get them in yet so couldn't tell you whether they're good... watch this space tho

[gtnickk]

Right Fella's did some research yesterday (was my day off). Well to my suprise i found out that Lovells and Pedders are shit. This may be a biased opionion as to where i went. But i was showed stats of repairs and customers who were not happy with lovells or pedders.

To my estonishment people who had fitted pedders to there car were not happy and either they were replacing shocks within the first month. This applied to lovell to. However i found out that kings have a good reputation and that hardly no one complains funny because they are much cheaper. This also applied to Monroe to. I'm going to look in to Bilsteins as the place i went to recommend them if you are going to do a custom Job. If i get Blienstien this will set me back a bit because they are the dearest but you get what you pay for. After that i needed a break to much information so i bought a kebab.

Edited January 7, 2006 by gtnickk

[love ke70]

blienstein or bilstein?

if your talking bilstein theyre the shizz, but as far as i was aware they difnt produce for the ke anymore?

and just something of interest, rear sprinter springs are not the same as rear ke70 springs

[slapper]

i have heard theories that ideally, you want the front control arms to sit level when the car is at rest. that's how low your car "should" be for best handling

 

not necessarily true as far as my various reading tells me! :)

 

for a start, when you compress the suspension, the ends of the arms will start moving inwards, pulling the wheel more into positive camber. In general, you don't want your lower arms to deflect beyond horizontal.

 

look for articles about roll-centers to also show why flat control arms are usually not a good idea ...

 

draw a line 90 degrees from the strut top toward the inside of the car - draw a line from the bottom of the strut up through the lower control arm ... where these two arms intersect is the "instantaneous center"

 

draw a line from the instantaneous center to the midle of the tyre's contact patch - where this line intersects the center-line of the car is the roll-center for that particular suspension configuration (note that it will all change as soon as you start cornering and things start compressing on the outside and extending on the inside).

 

The roll center is interesting because this is (in a very simplistic nutshell) an indication of where your suspension is able to apply force to counteract roll - the further this point is offset from the center of gravity, the more of a tendency you get to roll the car.

 

The flatter your control arms are, the further you move the instantaneous center away from the strut, and the lower the roll-center moves (sometimes below ground level even). If the roll-center is already below the center of gravity, this moves it even further.

 

Of course ... the problem with all this is that - although I can plot the roll-center for the front of the corolla, I'm not really sure where the center of gravity is :S

 

When you lower your car, you can stuff the roll-centers so badly taht you actually finish up with *more* body roll than before - then you start fitting roll-center adjusters that extend the bottom of the strut back down to tilt the lower control-arms back toward their original angle.

 

enough!!

 

cheers,

Slapper

[gtnickk]

blienstein or bilstein?

 

Whoops just correct that.:rocknroll:

 

Sounds like they just wanted to sell you what they had on the shelf.

 

Well Nick in the back of my mind i was thinking that to, i have always had doubts about Monroe as i have always been told they were shit or you get what you pay for, and if lovells wernt good then why are the in hot4's mags and fast fours. I will do a bit more research and what i get is what i get. :P

Edited January 7, 2006 by gtnickk

[Super Jamie]

not necessarily true as far as my various reading tells me! :P

excellent, you have sufficently confused me about suspension to last the next 5 years :y:

 

i understand what you're saying tho. i once read a magazine test where they put a stock N14 pulsar around a track a few times, then put in lowered springs and it actually went slower and handled worse, just looked better

 

super research there slapper :rocknroll:

 

all off-the-shelf springs are crap compared to customs. the reason people replace their shocks soon after putting ANY lowered spring in is that they're running crappy old stock shocks with lowered springs, which you realistically shouldn't do, but it's alright for cars that are only lowered a little bit (40mm or less). any more than that and you really should change to short stroke shocks and have your struts shortened to suit the new suspension travel

[muller]

dang that was a lot of info to absorb in a tiny little amount of time.

 

"excellent, you have sufficently confused me about suspension to last the next 5 years" ---makes 2

[slapper]

excellent, you have sufficently confused me about suspension to last the next 5 years :y:

 

then whack in the variations that occurr as suspension travels ... combine that with rear roll-centers (*easy* to plot with solid rear axle), think about the roll axis (is the rear center higher than the front etc) and it gets really ugly!

 

 

i understand what you're saying tho. i once read a magazine test where they put a stock N14 pulsar around a track a few times, then put in lowered springs and it actually went slower and handled worse, just looked better

 

usually, if you just drop it straight out, you drop the roll center (at least as far as the front is concerned) by more than the center of gravity ... some of the pain will be offset by stiffer springs but you will invariably have to think about roll bars, RCAs etc to get most benefit.

 

 

the reason people replace their shocks soon after putting ANY lowered spring in is that they're running crappy old stock shocks with lowered springs, which you realistically shouldn't do, but it's alright for cars that are only lowered a little bit (40mm or less). any more than that and you really should change to short stroke shocks and have your struts shortened to suit the new suspension travel

 

As you say, dropping by up to 40 mm or so keeps you pretty much within "factory tolerances" and doesn't alter suspension geometry by enough to make too much of a difference - and you usually don't need shocks with a shorter stroke.

 

Problems come with shorter and stiffer shocks *without* increasing the damping ... the stiffer spring wants to rebound faster and you finish up blowing oil seals around the shaft. You also finish up under-damped which means your shocks are not doing enough to slow the spring travel down and things get bouncy - this is in addition to stroke length problems.

 

In general: most "off the shelf" after-market shocks are around 20% shorter and stiffer than standard shocks - which makes them about as stiff as a standard shock when it has been compressed by 20% ... so standard shocks are still within cooee of something useful.

 

2006-01-09 edit: that should say "after-market springs" :P

 

All serious stuff - luckily I'm not too obsessed (and don't need to be with what my cars get used for!) and make do with compromises to a large extent - even my neighbour pokes shit at my under-spending mentality :rocknroll:

 

cheers,

Slapper

Edited January 8, 2006 by slapper

[Super Jamie]

then whack in the variations that occurr as suspension travels ... combine that with rear roll-centers (*easy* to plot with solid rear axle), think about the roll axis (is the rear center higher than the front etc) and it gets really ugly!

or, you can use it to your advantage, to change the way the car pitches and to correct driveline inequalities. like how the ass of an evo 7 sits so high, so they turn in better. it looks stupid, but it works

 

interesting fact about aftermarket shocks being shorter and stiffer, i was not aware of that :rocknroll:

[slapper]

interesting fact about aftermarket shocks being shorter and stiffer, i was not aware of that :rocknroll:

 

oops - "after-market springs" I meant ...

 

Slapper

[Super Jamie]

oh. lol, damn. no such thing as a free lunch :rocknroll: