i am curious, on the same car does suspension setup change when hp goes up or down? basically, if you have your suspension setup by some suspension guru and you put on some mods and get a good chunk of more hp, does that mean that you should get your suspension retuned?

 

Improved handling is always better when it comes to performance driving, whether its a Miata or a Mustang or a Civic or an Evo. No matter how much power you are making, you can always use better handling (and vice versa).

There's no "tuning" a suspension to handle a certain power level, because handling has more to do with physical aspects of the car (tires, ARB's, weight distribution, driver) than it has to do with how much power it can put out.

Some might argue that changing the power delivery (acceleration and braking) of the car might affect how the car behaves on corner exit and entry but IMO that has more to do with tires and brakes than it does the rest of the suspension.

 

+1 for having to do with the tires.

It's all about using the contact patch of the tire to your fullest advantage, no matter the appilcation.

 

^ your suspension allows your tire to make/keep contact with the ground so what are you trying to say? If your suspension has too little rebound for instance when moving over rough surfaces it is going to have trouble returning to the ground as fast as it could to have maximum contact with the ground, whilst if its too high it will hop over the bumps decreasing the amount of time its in contact with the pavement.

Suspension work/tuning allows you to make the most of your tires. Obviously tires are crucial because they are the only thing that makes contact with the surface you move on, but the suspension plays a huge role in how your car uses them......

I dunno if I agree with this. The required setup for a 300whp evo vs a 600 whp evo considering all things remain the same besides power will be quite different.

A 600 whp car wil be going so much faster down straightaways that it will have to brake a lot harder to take the same turns the 300whp car does, this will create a need for different settings from braking alone. Next you talk bout power delivery, the more violent the power comes on the harder it is going to be to keep the tires from spinning, again changing the requirements for the suspension, compared to a smoothe even power band.

I don't know how the tires have more to do with corner entry/exit being that they are controlled by the suspension. Varying compounds will change the amount of suspension you use up in terms of travel and force, how a car acts under braking is also very adjustable via suspension settings too...

I don't know how the "proper" suspension varies between different power levels, what I do know is that they will most certainly be quite different.


Scorke

 

It's compression that controls unsprung weight, not rebound. If you want to maximize tire contact duration with the track surface, you will want to run as little compression as possible and allow the springs to do their job.

Explain how different you think the setups will be? You can't say that they will certainly be different, without explaining how and where it is different. Will it be in the spring rates, the damping, both? Does a high HP car somehow have different critical damping or different ideal natural frequency than it's lesser-HP counterpart?

Tire compounds has NOTHING to do with the OP's original post, so varying tire compounds is a variable we don't even have to consider. Stickier tires* = more grip = better for anyone, high or low HP as I stated before.

*to a point.

 

If they have nothing to do with the post then why did you say this?

Who ever said anything about unsprung weight? I said very specifically, for example, over rough surfaces aka bumps? When moving over a rough surface the suspension hits the bumps, the faster/harder it returns to the surface is determined by the rebound settings, I never said anything about unsprung wait but thanks?

I am sorry but tires definately have something to do with the original post. Unless there are people running 235s on a road course with 5-600 hp it most definately has an impact, as you will not run the exact same suspension settings to get the exact same result with two different tires in size or compound.

Scorke

 

Learn to read posts a little more thoroughly.

I said tires and brakes will have more of an impact on corner entry and exit behavior than other suspension components with regards to the OP's original post. You went off discussing tire COMPOUNDS, and I will say again that stickier tires will benefit any car regardless of HP.

You did.

It's beginning to sound like you don't know the difference between sprung weight (chassis, driver, half control arms, half ARB's, etc), unsprung weight (shocks, springs, knuckles, brakes, tires, wheels, etc), rebound and compression. When you talk about controlling suspension components, you are talking (mostly) about compression. When you talk about squat, dive, pitch and roll then you are talking about rebound.

That doesn't answer the OP's question. What I said did answer the OP's question. You're looking for points to argue outside of the OP's post, I'm not here to talk about those points. If you want, make a new post about it.

 

Where did I say anything that made it seem that I didn't know the difference between sprung and unsprung weight?

You came into this thread and spit out a lot of jargon and suspension related technical terms and really offered nothing to answer the OP's question, which is will optimal suspension setups differ between low and high HP cars, to which the answer is yes.

You stated in your first post
-better handling is better (wow )
-handling has to do with physics (i agree)
-that power delivery has an impact on corner entry and exit(I half agree)

I think I did a far better job of answering the initial question.

Scorke

 

That just makes my point all the more obvious.

I answered the OP's question in my first post. Sorry if terms like "rebound" and "compression" are too technical for you.

And you still haven't answered my question on how the suspension will differ between the two cars. Feel free to take a whack at that whenever you want.

 

Why don't you ask a suspension guru....prove me wrong, I'd love to be, as I said before I cannot theorize on why/how as I am sure it would vary greatly due to the weight, weight distribution, COG, RC, and countless other variables including how the powerband changed, what the track was like.

I never said I could tell you how doubling the power of a car would alter the optimal suspension setup just that it would.

One such thing that I will theorize is that with double the power accellerating will transfer weight more heavily biased to the rear of the car compressing the rear suspension much more than a car with half the power. I will then go on to guess that the extra weight in the rear/ out of the front under accelleration will cause for different suspenion settings.(maybe as basic as alignment, maybe more to do with compression or spring rates)

That is all, ask Robi or somebody you will believe.

Scorke

Scorke

 

...

 

Well, you'd be wrong I guess. The same amount of load will transfer no matter how much power you have, and load transfer during accel/decel is almost instantaneous. It doesn't take any deep knowledge of suspension to know this.

Once again, we are talking with regards to the OP's post, so we can "theorize" all we want till we're blue in the face about how an alphabet soup of suspension related factors will affect handling, but that's not what the OP's post was about.

Next time you decide to answer a post, be prepared to back up what you're saying. Otherwise, don't expect anyone to take you seriously, let alone put any stock in your answer.

 

[QUOTE=Noob4life;4396299]Learn to read posts a little more thoroughly.


Scorke does have that problem.

 

That was from my original post, so please don't try and make me look pompous.... How will a car that is accelerating with twice the amount of power not transfer more G's if accelerating that much quicker?

Scorke

 

Hmm... too easy.

You can't transfer acceleration. You produce more of it or less of it, but you don't transfer it. And if you think that has anything to do with the original topic, then it's back to suspension 101 for you.

I covered the basics though in my previous post: if you have two of the exact same cars save for one car having more power (say, a stock Evo vs a 600hp Evo), the same load will be transferred during acceleration, braking, and cornering.

Welcome to Being Wrong. We're all wrong sometimes, that's how we learn.