The Auto Garage- Tips and Advice: Performance 101: Suspension/Traction
by Eric Bonneman
FeedTheVillage.com - Tips and Advice: Performance 101: Suspension/Traction
The most important step of creating power, or even utilizing factory power, is getting it to the ground. This can mean different things for different driving situations. A drag car needs a completely different set up, from a circle track car, and a road race car. For the everyday street driver, looking for a little better cornering and launch traction, I recommend a mild “road race” suspension build. If you drive a little faster than your car was designed, or if your car drives faster than your suspension was designed, this is a very important safety step as well. Lets start with what we want to avoid in our suspension, when performance minded driving is the goal. When we launch our car from a start, we want all the power at the drive wheels to catch the asphalt and make us go. Now, of course, vehicles with a massive amount of horse power to (vehicle) weight are going to break the tires loose on a launch. This can only be avoided by learning when and where to apply the power in your vehicle, based on experience. What we can avoid is “wheel hop.” Wheel hop is created when the tires, especially on a front wheel drive vehicle, break loose, but instead of spinning smoothly, it causes the tires to hop. This happens when our suspension at the drive wheels is too soft and/or we have excessive engine movement. The vehicles frame and body begin to jerk and the soft springs begin to bounce up and down (engine movement can also add to this effect). You can hear a car with wheel hop taking off; it creates a rhythmic chirp of the tires. This happens when the weight comes back over the wheels (every time the springs rebound). Body roll is created the same way wheel hop is (for the most part), with the use of soft springs. Body roll is a term used to describe the side movement of your vehicles body during cornering. Where the inside of the car body lifts and the outside lowers. Again, the more energy that is expended to move the body of the vehicle, the more we detract from the power to the ground. Body roll can attribute to “pushing” through a turn, loss of traction in a turn, and roll over situations. The weight of the vehicle is being thrown rapidly to one side. There are a few simple suspension modifications that can eliminate all of these things. We can do it relatively inexpensively or go all out with full race components. You have to know once you take these steps; we no longer drive like we are floating on a cloud. You will feel every pebble in the road, you will have a dramatic increase in road noise, interior squeaks and rattles amplify, speed bumps become an obstacle, and if you enjoy pushing your car to its limits, absolute joy. The first major step is two part. These are the major factors in eliminating power robbing suspension characteristics. The first of the two is, springs. You want to get yourself a set of good stiff performance springs. These will come in a variety of drops (inches to lower your car), and spring rates (the amount of bounce and how it is applied). You want to lower your vehicles CG (center of gravity). The lower the car, the more direct weight over your tires, the more traction you will get. Except we cannot drive a car on the road daily, that scrubs the ground at any sleight variance in road surface. This just isn’t sensible. Performance 101: Suspension/Traction Continued
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