Sunday, November 4, 2007

Checking the limit of bump travel for the front suspension

We didn't really know how much you can lower the car before something binds in the front suspension, our guess was that the ball joints would be the first to limit the travel.

The information lying around on the net wasn't that helpful either, usual answer to our question was that with lowering of 80mm or more, the upper suspension arm hits the frame, limiting travel. According to a fellow builder, you can go over 100mm, and that then the front wheel hits the wheel well. So we couldn't find any real info.

About hitting the inner fender. We have experience of that when it happened to Mika with his Porsche on Ahvenisto's fastest corner (a Finnish race track). When a rear wheel hits the inner fender, it's like pulling the hand brake. Luckily nothing bad happened.

But back to the point, checking how low we can go:

Upper front suspension arm. The angle is quite bad, and it's close to hitting the inner fender. With the tires we're running the tire would be 3,5 cm above the fender.

The left side is at it's limit, and the right side is at our normal ride height. Only about 10cm makes the suspension look that wrong.

The steering rod is the first to bind, not the ball joints. You could modify the frame to get even lower. Also the suspension geometry limits lowering, even at the ride height we will be running at, we cannot get the camber values to the recommended stock. At this point we have no need to go lower, because it would take so much more effort. Maybe next year...

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