Rear Springs

[irokin]

Shitful for handling

 

Not to mention highly illegal...

[Rolla__Boy]

Really? Thanks

[anastasios]

lol the only reason its shit for handling is the bouncing, on a smoothroad there is no body roll lol and drives where u point it

[slapper]

really, you guys ....

 

you can't just flip leaves and expect there to be no change in handling ...

some of it will help, some of it will hinder handling improvements. On balance, only careful analysis of what you've done will predict what will happen - or stick it in, drive it and see what the result is (empirical evidence).

 

1) you lower you center of gravity at the rear - good if you also lower it at the front

2) you lower your rear roll-center - more complicated, but generally good if you also match it with a change at the front ... although that's not as easy as it might sound (eg. lowering the front may actually raise your front roll-center with respect to your center of gravity)

3) who knows whether you've decreased or increased your rear spring rate?

- decrease will give you more understeer (without considering other effects)

- increase will give you more oversteer (without considering other effects)

4) you may allow your leaf pack to deform past flat - bad as leaf spring rate decreases once you go past flat

5) leaf spring generally increase in spring rate until they hit flat, then decrease as they deform past flat - what you've just built is a compound pack that will not necessarily behave in a useful manner. Your spring rate may actually decrease as you go over a bump or turn a corner up to the point where the flipped leaves achieve their original shape, from there it will increase. Or it may increase, then decrease, then increase again - leading to unpredictable handling ... you may find you car corners fine up to a point ... but a tighter corner gives you wonderful turn-in followed by massive understeer as your rear springs hit the decreased spring-rate zone.

 

All in all, it's a cheap way of doing something for looks, but has no real place in a careful and considered approcah to improving handling. Having said that, it may also be entirely adequate for your needs.

 

Any discussion of what happens when you hit your bump-stops is not limited to flipping leaves - the effect is the same however you lower the rear - flipped leaves may figure more prominently in the unpredictable behaviour of non-linear progressive spring-rates though.

 

Strictly speaking - lowering leaves is a combination of one or more of the following if you're also interested in handling:

1) resetting leaves

2) having eyes on main leaf inverted

3) using lowering blocks (last resort)

 

chairs,

Slapper