Lets cover a few things about springs and than we will discover what need to know.
Spring Life: How to build a spring and how much performance the spring will have is determined by the build. Spring life is a term that is used in the software to determine how good the design is of the spring. If the design is less than 80% it is a failure and needs to be redesigned. A good spring needs all the processes done to it and this will add performance to the spring, and you will feel this in the seat of the race car. Manufactures have come up with ways to bypass the process and produce a spring with a low spring life but still meet the requirements of some races. They lack performance but they will run for some time. Remember, if it is not broken in pieces we think it is still good to run, WRONG.
Feel: is what counts because you will connect that to grip. Feel happens in the rebound stroke because the compression stroke is too fast. Feelings on the RR can happen in compression strokes because they are much slower, but they often don’t due to the lack of compression in that shock. We are using feel as a guideline to determining the output of the spring and this will run us longer on bad springs than we should, so be careful in trusting your feel. What ever you think is a good timeline based on feel cut it in have. Springs add a lot to a cars performance, and they are cheap in comparison to other things we buy, don’t be fooled because they look new.
Spring rate: has become very soft in the front of the cars, and this confuses me a lot. It is like we have softened the springs to increase the traction but forgot how it works. We have messed up somewhere. Preloading a soft spring is a thing but in almost every case we can’t do that due to the rule package. So why the soft springs? I was told by a driver this year that it is just part of the setup and to get used to the car hitting the track. Well, it cost him his shot at a National Championship and a great shock vendor. I think we have gotten load and rate confused with the performance and have become very hung up on ideas and not principles. The rate of a spring is not as important as we think but we need to understand what it is and how it is going to work in our car. Side note, spring rate will not determine if a spring is still good or not, a spring will rate fine long after its life is over.
The rebound rate: is not what you think it is, or not what some guys make it out to be, all though it is a thing, the rebound rate should be the same as compression rate. Why it is important is because that is what we are controlling with the shock and the lateral loads of the car. The softer the return rate (rebound) the better the load at the tire will be because we can hold it longer at the tire. (grip)
If the spring could have a different rate in rebound than compression it would be golden if it is softer than compression. This is what happens when the load comes up off the bump stop like on the right front of the car. You may have heard someone say to have your 3” as soft as you can because it becomes controllable by the shock and the lateral loads.
Free height: is a good thing to document when buying a new spring and doing the measurement very accurate and repeatable is key to this information being useable later on. Springs should be preset after being built, this will reset the height of the spring and it will stay this height the rest of it usable life, if it changes it tome for a new one.
The 2 things you need to know about springs:
(Spring load and Spring life)
Understand these two things and you will get the most from you spring program and it will give you the most on the track. Spring performance will come at a cost, but this is not because we are asking you to spend more money, it is because spring manufactures are building cheaper springs that don't last for a season.
How to rate a spring:
We have always been taught the old 1" + 1" method to rate a spring and many still use this practice today to rate a spring.
I am not saying it is all bad because we still rate spring this way sometimes. There are other ways to get the job done like "rate + 1" and load + 1" although these are just different ways they still have little function. At the end of the day all you know is what the rate is and not the condition of the spring.
Spring load:
In this chart we are loading the spring a 3" to the same rate (1400 pound ish) and doing it with different springs. You can see where the heavier springs may have some advantage in grip because of its softer rate at the 2" height. Also note that the ride height will drop as the rate increases.
Spring life chart:
Spring life chart is going to be harder to determine, because your input is needed. I feel this is a must in determining spring life.
You say what is spring life?
Spring life is the usable part of the spring that adds performance to your race car. Example is when you put 4 new springs in the car and it comes to life, you can feel the energy the the spring has in it. When that feel goes away it is time to get new springs. In the above chart you will document the life of the spring and determine its feel performance. In the last column you will determine on a scale from1 to 10 with 10 being new and 1 being done what the life performance is, and when you get to 5 it is time for new springs. Don't be fooled buy the price you pay and the hype you hear that a spring is going to last you a long time because good chance it won't.
Understand this no matter what you pay you need to be looking at them pretty hard by the 5 week period, some better than others and you will need to determine when this is.
Make sure this is based on performance and not cost or you gain nothing by doing it, you can determine late if you can afford it or not.
Comentarios