What's up peeps,

It's been a while since I've last posted, here it goes.

Ever since I installed my STD coils I've been wondering how to set them up for optimal performance, namely Spring Preload, rear shock body length & travel, and dampening settings.

If you have information to share about these topics, please do! I think this could help coilover set owners regardless of brand

The.car handles great, but I want to make sure I'm gettin the full potential outta them :)

Thanks,

Austin

speak of the devil lol

i can't answer it, but this would be some interesting info. especially since i just started an e-mail convo between me and STDsuspension haha!

I really like them, they changed the spring design on the rear, and even sent me the new ones for free. Great customer service

Any advice on setup theory and procedures is what I'm looking for!

I really like them, they changed the spring design on the rear, and even sent me the new ones for free. Great customer service

haha yea they told me that story

As long as you don't have to adjust the spring height itself to change the ride height(which would change the spring rate, and put a wrench in everything), it should be preset for your car. Now it's just a question of setting up your damping/rebound to your preference.

Well the front spring preload was just setup by hand tightening the collars on the springs, I've heard of a "jack each wheel up" method but I don't understand the concept lol

The preload and ride are independent on these coils btw

how much does the std coilovers go for?

how much does the std coilovers go for?

R1 about $1300
R3 about $1500

Might want to contact them for more info the link is in my sig.

The correct way is to find the ideal ride height, which at this point I don't think anyone has shared that info. I sure don't know. Next step is to give it a bit of rake, nose slightly lower than rear, 1/4" to 1/2" roughly. Then put the car's tires on 4 seperate scales. Then tweak each spring preload to get an equal weight on each tire scale, left to right and in a "X" pattern as well.. Front to back weight bias, I am not sure of for this car. The damping is something you have to set to your driving style, without causing the damping to overpower the spring or vise versa. I used to do this all the time with rc cars and it made the difference between podium finishes and being a hack. Same principle for cars. There was a show on the Powerblock on Speed channel last week if I remember correctly. Anyways they showed exactly how to do this with a Cobra kit car on coilovers. I know finding a set of those scales would not be cheap. Speed shops would probably charge a good bit to do it as well. Also you need to set the camber and toe afterwards. I'm no expert on 1:1 car suspension, so any of you engineers feel free to correct me if I am wrong or missed something.

You race/raced RC? dude i'm so addicted to it my toothbrush is brushless... lol but seriously,:bow:

Since nobody knows anything about tracking this car with your Standard Suspension, your first step is set the car up flat…and then work from there. You will need an alignment rack, car scales and a tape measure.

The first thing you want to do is set your car up on the alignment rack with a scale under each wheel.

The next thing you have to do is set your ride height. The rake of the car will change the weight on each wheel, so this must be done first. There are two places to measure that from. Some people measure from the floor (alignment rack) to the top of each fender wheel opening (center of the axle at the top of the wheel well opening at the fender). And the other (my preferred location) is from the floor to the chassis just behind the front wheels and just in front of the rear wheels. These points are also along the wheel well opening. I just prefer to measure a solid point inboard of the fender, on the chassis. Now, do not rake the car! Set it up flat! You need a start point and flat is that point. Also, make sure that the outer suspension joint (lower front wheel) is lower than the centers of that same lower A-arm at the chassis bolts. If the chassis bolts are lower, the car is too low!

The next thing you need to do is put approximately your weight in the driver’s seat (I use four 50-lbs water softener salt bags), have half a tank of fuel and read the scale weights. Add up all four scales to get the total weight of the car. Then add up both front weights and both rear weights to calculate the weight bias front to rear. This car should have about 65% front, 35% rear. You will get some weird number. Jot it down…it is very important! Now add up the weights of the left side wheels and the right side wheels. Proportion the right side total to the weird number you’ve calculated above and that is your ideal weight for each wheel on the right side. Repeat this exercise for the left side. Adjust each spring preload to get your target weights. Check your ride height that you have not changed it by adjusting each preload. Adjust as needed.

Now set your wheel alignment. I would set my front camber to 0.00 and toe to 0.00. Since this is a FWD car, the pull of the front wheels from the drive of the engine will take the slop out of all the suspension joints and give you some toe in. That is enough. Remember, we are setting a start point of zero here. Set your rear camber to -0.40 degrees. This is Toyota’s/Scion’s minimum setting. We are going for flat, so use that. I like to set 0.02 degrees of toe in on the rear. This helps significantly in transitions from straight ahead to start of turn and not enough wear the tires. The rear will follow the front’s inputs much better. The rear end is not as loose with this much toe in at the rear. Again, we are trying to get a zero start point. These alignment adjusts will have changed your previous settings. Go back and adjust your ride height, wheel weights and again your alignment. You will do this about three times to get it right.
Now for your shock/damper settings – set both compression (jounce) and rebound to minimum damping. Some people have the feel to bounce on the fender of the car to set a closer start point of the rebound only. As you drive the car, if the car continues to oscillate after a bump, increase the rebound damping one click at a time. You still want this at the minimum as possible. Keep your compression damping at the minimum for now. This is the last adjustment you will change to get the feel that you want.

You now have your start point…go tracking and only change one item at a time. If this is a street only vehicle, this zero point will impress you. This will work very nicely for the street.

You have googled a lot (and dont even have coilovers per your own posts) but you are not getting the whole picture.

For best handling on this car (still street driven) you should be running more negative camber in the front than the rear. About -1.25 degrees is fine on the street. Run a tad less in the rear. Toyota sets it up the way they do (more camber in the rear) for the same reason most fwd's are set up this way. It makes the car push more rather than snap oversteer ... safer for the average joe driver in the rain. You can assume if you are tracking and autoxing the car you will start with at least -1 degree if you want a starting point. I run almost -3 up front for autox events and about -1.5 or so on the street.

That "zero point" you post will be horribly unimpressing (well, it will be just like stock) even for just a street ride.

You also describe corner balancing wrong. You make the CROSS weights equal , not the total side weights.

You also describe corner balancing wrong. You make the CROSS weights equal , not the total side weights.
That’s because I’m not corner balancing…I’m not even equalizing the side weights as you say I’m doing. If you corner balance the weights, all you do is acknowledge that the chassis is twisted and NOT compensate for the twist…just equalize suspension travel. I provided a procedure for balancing (not equalizing) the grip (and therefore the load) on each tire.

This is an old thread…just stirring the pot I guess.

No, you dont. Corner balancing does just that, best equalize the application of grip (and that is why anyone serious about setting up a car will corner balance it). If you get the side to side weights equal, you then throw the rest off. You can never, on any practical road car, get the corner weights perfectly equal. That is why you make the cross weight percentages equal.

The steps are to:

Figure out the angles, corner weights, roll centers, roll couples, motion ratio's ,etc AND the suspension frequency you want to target and choose springs from there

Dampers are then chosen from the above springs

Or you can start with off the shelf coilovers, but they wont be perfect since you cant choose the suspension frequency you want first. But if you are really going serious the above needs to be done first.

Set the ride height from the math you did above and some measurement, possibly some trial and error, etc get it as even as you can.

Then put it on scales and CORNER balance it.

Then start aligning the car.

If you get the side to side weights equal, you then throw the rest off.
Correct! That is why I said I did NOT do that. You keep wanting to pawn that off on me. Stick it someplace else…neither you nor I do that! Move on…

The steps are to:
Figure out the angles, corner weights, roll centers, roll couples, motion ratio's ,etc.
I want to watch you do that first…without putting the car on scales…I’ll even pay money to see that! I’ll bring a video camera…that should be a great YouTube moment. Figuring out is significantly different from measuring…or estimating.

frequency you want to target and choose springs from there
Dampers are then chosen from the above springs
Hey! We agree!

Umm, who said i would do it without scales? Do you pop pills before you post? My car was corner balanced on a set of scales. I like how you try to pick out the parts you can attempt to answer with rude comments (although failing ones). The difference in you and I is that I try my best to share good information I have learned, experienced, etc. Your motive is to try to make everyone on here think you know way more than you do. People can read the various suspension items I and others have posted years before you existed on this site , or on ystc, or what people like Dennis Grant and others have out there and see what is fact and fiction. This site needs more over generalized google regurgitation like we all need an a$$hole on our elbow, especially from someone hellbent on nothing but making the unknowledgeable think they are an expert. So when you have an intelligent reply to share that actually makes sense, then share it. Otherwise you are wasting space.

Your reply about corner balancing again shows a lot of error in your understanding. So corner balancing just shows the TWIST in the chasis? No, it does no such thing. The proper formula for a properly corner balanced car is (corner weights are what is being shown): LF+RR = RF + LR

That in no way is meant to measure twist in anything. It is THE way to balance out the car once you have ride height set. It is how to ensure your car turns in both directions equally well.

No need to call names...just read...don't try to interpret, because so far you've been wrong about me. Nowhere did I say I was seeing, showing, extrapolating, deducing, measuring or calculating the twist in the chassis. I said acknowledge...that means you know it is there (but in your case, I see now that I’m wrong…you actually don’t) and do nothing about it...it's just there. Your formula is correct for corner balancing. Again, that is not what I’m doing! Now that you’ve got those numbers…what do they mean? What does your formula mean? Hmmm, reread what I’ve said…don’t interpret. Then reread my instructions on how to balance the corner loads for a consistent handling car.

Here is an example with number…since engifineer is so enraged that he can’t see and has not thought it through. Refer to attached figure. I’ve just designed a car with a 200-in wheelbase and a 100-in wheel track. Any car will do, since these calculations are for any car. I’ve set the center of gravity of the car at 65% of the weight on the front wheels and the CG off to the right by 5%...the engine is to the right, so I thought this was a reasonable estimate of a car that weighs 2500-lbs. Calculating the weights on each wheel, I got 731.25-lbs on the LF, 893.75-lbs on the RF, 393.75-lbs on the LR and 481.25-lbs on the RR. These are your target weight as I’ve described and I’ve shown the calculations to get you there. This is statics…we have not even gotten to the dynamics of your car yet. You need to get the statics right before you go to dynamics. Now my cross weights come out to be as engifieer suggests 731.25-lbs + 481.25-lbs = 1212.5-lbs. Now for the other cross weights, we get 893.75-lbs + 393.75-lbs = 1287.5-lbs. Hmmm! 1212.5-lbs does not equal 1287.5-lbs. If I try to cross balance the car as engifineer suggests, the statics don’t work out! And if you can get there, you’ve just tweaked in a twist into your car. Or just throw in a 75-lb bag of cement in your car and drive around that way.

You race/raced RC? dude i'm so addicted to it my toothbrush is brushless... lol but seriously,:bow:
Shoot me some pics of your r/c's sometime, still got a ton of my money pits in photobucket. I miss the hobby but the Tc is my only indulgence at this point.
On topic, you get the car dialed in? plenty of good info here....I knew the engineers would be all over this one.

Call names? I simply questioned why you are making up things. I never said anything about balancing my car without scales ... you made that up, imagined it, etc.

You cannot practically balance the load on all tires on a practical street car.

What do the numbers mean in my formula? The two cross weights should EQUAL. That is the way every race car, performance street car, etc with adjustable ride height is set up to balance the loads as best as is possible. Doing a side to side comparison just attempts to equal out side to side loads, it does nothing to make a consistent handling car since you completely ignore front to back weight distribution. That is why everyone uses a corner balance approach, which uses cross weights to properly include front/rear and right/left weight distribution. Do that and what you are describing is not needed. Why take the time to halfway do the job, when with the same effort and tools you can properly corner balance the car, which is the part you need in the end. Corner balancing in a sense makes sure your car is not acting like a chair with a short leg when you are in a corner, which makes the car corner differently in a right hand corner than it will in a left hand corner. The idea is to make it corner consistently in both directions. There is no mystery to the numbers, it is not "theory", it is the way people have been setting up coilovers forever.

In your example, you would raise/lower the appropriate corners to get the cross weights equal (using your approach would NOT do this, which is why you came out with unequal numbers). I balanced my car side to side with a tape measure and level ground to get it to the alignment shop so I could put it on scales and properly corner balance it. After corner balancing, my cross weights are 50/50 using the method I described. This is VERY common, VERY well known, not my own method. It is also very easy to understand. I feel like you are still trying to slowly add validity to your point so people dont think you were incorrect ;) And I will leave it at that. People can go out and read what thousands of others with experience have done and see how to set it up. They dont need this thread to tell them that.

If it makes you feel better to try to pick a fight, tell me I (and everyone else that has ever set up a car) am wrong, you are the know it all, etc, go right ahead and do so. I will continue setting my car up the correct way. Hopefully if anything others on here will go learn for themselves and do it the right way as well.

It looks like you are spreading all kinds of misinformation. In another thread, you wrote that TEIN SSs are junk, yet that’s what you’ve got on your ’05 tC. Statics don’t compute with your method (cross balancing) but it is probably close enough for the masses. All you need to know is how to add to do it your way…any mechanic can do that. The accurate method (mine) requires the one doing the setting to also know how to multiply. There is only one winner and a bunch of losers. He who makes the combination of compromises wins! And that’s why we run the races.

No, I (very clearly, but you only include what fits in your argument) stated that in the world of high end suspension systems, Teins are considered low quality. So are JIC (they are considered JUNK in most serious circles) and even Koni has its big shortcomings when it comes to linear adjustments and damping rates. I have stated this a million times, including stating that for off the shelf options for the tC, the Teins are decent, but are not considered "high quality" when it comes to serious competition setups. Like I said, you just like to include what fuels your arguments.

So corner balancing is used by race teams and professionals everywhere, but somehow it is not the best way ? The predominant knowledge in the real world says otherwise, but live in your own world if you like. You actually told me that my computations on spring rates were wrong because coilovers "move the mounting point out to the wheels" making the motion ratio change ... yet you claim to know more than anyone. In other words, you are arguing to prove YOUR so called knowledge, nothing else.

And yes mods, I know ... dont feed the trolls ... :P I will let it be now. And I know he will come back with some creative way of saying he was right and the rest of the world is wrong, get his last word in .... but that sounds like a few others we used to know on here doesnt it ?

to get the thread back on track...on page 1 I posted about the line in the sand, how low is "too" low, blah blah blah. Basically I was saying that suspensions may be modified to compensate for dropping the vehicle beyond the 1.-- inch that is considered detrimental. Engifineer commented regarding some ways this can be achieved...notably custom spindles. So I'm watching this hot rod show last night and the dudes were putting 2" lowering springs with what they called 2.5" drop spindles on a 1978 chevy truck (pro stock) for a total drop of 4.5". Now its a short show, so the only way they explained the benefit of custom spindles was to say that they basically set the wheel higher in order to compensate for the amount of drop. I was wondering if someone could elaborate more specifically on custom spindles and how beneficial they are in dropping the car.

Someone is thinking way too much into it of corner balancing, and may have asked for video....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQfw1bZDP9g&feature=youtube_gdata_player

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njh_hNoFkOA&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Best to leave it to suspension tuning pros.
Good day.

And yes mods, I know ... dont feed the trolls ... :P I will let it be now. And I know he will come back with some creative way of saying he was right and the rest of the world is wrong, get his last word in .... but that sounds like a few others we used to know on here doesnt it ?
yep:lol:

In both statics and dynamics, all forces act through the center of mass. We know where the center of mass is on any car and we both know how to measure it and calculate it. Does it ever move? No! (burning fuel is too slow of a change to count here…we are simplifying the analysis) As long as your tires are not sliding, we can approximate the reactions/trajectory pretty closely with just utilizing static analysis. Once your tires are sliding, you are completely in a dynamic condition. Now when you setup your car under static conditions to have one center of pressure (cross balancing) and your car starts to slide, you will get a shift in balance. That shift will feel like instability/unpredictability. Now if you set it up so that you have the same balance (65% front to rear in the example above) you will have the same feel in a turn weather your tires are sliding or not. The best handling car is a predictable car and that gives the driver confidence to drive comfortably right on the limit. If he exceeds that limit, nothing has changed. The dynamics of the car are exactly the same. You recover and go on pressing forward. Where is my analysis flawed? What am I missing?
Here is your chance to argue the physics of it all. I’m not interested in what other people do, say or your experience. Don’t tell me your wishful experience or your bloated resume. I’m not interested…I don’t think that anybody else on here is either. You call yourself an engineer…talk to me like an engineer. If you were not borne with the analytical mind of an engineer, you should have been taught analytical problem solving skills in engineering school. Solve the engineering problem analytically. Prove your case…I proved mine and all you had to say was that everybody else in the world does this.