Coilover FACTS.

[JusticePete]

Originally Posted by PQ

At some point, can't the serious racer look at the 'Ride Quality' factor and say you're a sissy for even making it a factor???

I just wonder how much performance is lost due to 'Ride Quality' being a factor when a manufacturer makes a suspension product.

Just curious.

If ride quality was something I didn't care about, (and vibrating wheels don't count) are their some other coilovers or springs I would want to look at from anyone?

I like to reply to a question like with with the F1 car concept. The F1 car must weigh in at a minimum at the end of the race, about 1,500 pounds. Ar the end of the race the drivers go off the road and pick up every pebble they can to add weight for the post race weight in.

My Camaro weighs in race ready at just under 4,200 pounds with driver or is almost THREE time heavier than a F1 car.

The rear wheels on an F1 car are for the sake of discussion ONLT 12" wide. To run a similar tire for the Camaro the rear tires would need to be THREE FEET WIDE. Most fast production car are under tired. They have too much weight, the brakes are too powerful and the engine two powerful for the size of the tire.

A very hard suspension will make you very fast for very few laps. You will frequently see NASCAR teams run a coil bound car in qualifying. The coil bound car is really fast. It will also east tires in no more than 6 laps. They NEVER race coil bound. Once again they are under tired.

Your Camaro is under tired. A very hard suspension will do nothing but eat your tires. A rock hard suspension will build heat rapidly in the tires causing them to get greasy. Once they are greasy they are slow. You can see from Pedders track testing that we are in balance for the car -- in harmony with just the right amount of compliance and the right amount of control. Lap after lap the cars are consistent because we work within the limitations of the vehicle.

Short answer, Pedders has the fastest lap times on the track for daily driven cars. The Pro Touring guys build phenomenal street machines. They are excellent drivers. We are faster than all of them in a car that is heavier than any of them and we run 100% stock control arms without a single chassis brace in the Camaro. What do we lose by being street civil and track ready -- NOTHING!

[robertway]

Originally Posted by JusticePete

Consider this a generic picture of an inverted design coilover.



The fixed point is the lower spring perch and the upper spring perch is where adjustment is made. Pre-compression is the load you place on the coil before you install it in the car and not the weight of the car sitting on the coils. That is called loaded height. The coil pictured above has an ideal height setting. I don't know what it is. It may be 5mm lower than stock, maybe 25mm lower than stock or 70mm lower than stock. There is a sweet spot that the coil will function best within the design parameters of the coil and damper. Raisin or lowering from that point degrades from optimal performance. When you raise or lower by spring perch height as opposed to setting the spring and adjusting the monotube body the best methodology would be to use coils of different lengths just as we all do for lowering coils.

I do follow you here with one exception. In the picture you post above it is obvious that the upper and lower perches are parts of two different structural parts and there fore (extreme example) when the coilover is not installed on the car there is no pre-compression on the spring because any attempt by the spring to expand will be allowed because it doesn't sit between two fixed points and will be allowed to expand until it can no longer overcome the resistance of the damper (hang with me here I am trying to speak suspension techie and probably failing but you get the picture). If I loosen the top perch, essentially running the perch higher on the tube then the result I would expect is the car to lower and the coil length be the same as it was at the higher ride height and the function of the spring remains the same, the car is just a bot lower. The only thing I can gather is the pre-compression you speak of would just prevent the spring from flopping around when there is no load at all on the spring such as in an "airborne" scenario or extreme unweighting of one of the corners. I am guessing that is where the helper spring comes into play in that picture as well given the chance that given enough duration of unloading the distance between the upper and lower perches might have the opportunity to be greater than the length of the uncompressed spring.

I do also see what you mean by if you were to lower the car enough it brings the top mono tube much closer to the bump stop and possibly limiting the travel range of the unit but I wonder if a ride height that low would ever be required or even functional on the Camaro.

[Kwik]

I have a BMR strut brace that fastens to the top of the shock towers. Can I run the Pedders coil-overs and retain the strut brace? Thanks, Bob

[JusticePete]

Originally Posted by Kwik

I have a BMR strut brace that fastens to the top of the shock towers. Can I run the Pedders coil-overs and retain the strut brace? Thanks, Bob

Yes.

That may be my shortest answer ever.

[Steve1968LS2]

Originally Posted by JusticePete

The Pro Touring guys build phenomenal street machines. They are excellent drivers. We are faster than all of them in a car that is heavier than any of them and we run 100% stock control arms without a single chassis brace in the Camaro. What do we lose by being street civil and track ready -- NOTHING!

I think we need a run off between your 2010 and my '68.. just for fun.. maybe have the same driver pilot both to take that out of the formula.

What tires do you run? I'm on PS2s now.. and yea, I know my car weighs 800 lbs less but that's not my fault

It would be fun.. I have a fairly competent PT car, and we fixed out problems from Spring Mountain.. Buttonwillow on the 25th? It would be hoot.

Also, I seem to remember a few being faster than you at Spring Mountain.. Just sayin..

The red car is badass.. and I nailed some killer shots of it at Gingerman, looked great and was crazy fast.

[JusticePete]

Steve,

That is a tempting invitation. You are right there will a couple of cars faster than us at the Optima event. The two weaknesses we had in 2010 were running OE brakes and the computer pulling timing out of the car due to IATs. The CTS-V brakes resolved the braking and the Stage II inter cooler from ProCharger resolved the IAT issues. I wish I could make the 25th. Yancy mentioned it too... Allow me to return the compliment you have one bad '68.

[mws444]

Man you guys out east and on the west coast have all the fun tracks. I am stuck in the desert about 4 hours from the closest track. I guess I need to start planning more road trips.

[Steve1968LS2]

Originally Posted by JusticePete

Steve,

That is a tempting invitation. You are right there will a couple of cars faster than us at the Optima event. The two weaknesses we had in 2010 were running OE brakes and the computer pulling timing out of the car due to IATs. The CTS-V brakes resolved the braking and the Stage II inter cooler from ProCharger resolved the IAT issues. I wish I could make the 25th. Yancy mentioned it too... Allow me to return the compliment you have one bad '68.

We all had issues.. I have the same computer in my car as yours.. and we lost first-gear syncro and a PS pump.. This year we are trying to spend more time making sure stuff will be right. They will also have a 200 treadwear tire rule, which is a good thing considering it's a "street car" event.

But it would be fun.. get Boris Said or someone to pilot both all out.. see what happens. My guess is it would be close one way or the other.

Then again.. sometimes I wish I had your air conditioning! lol

[Iansane]

I agree with Robertway. There is no preload on the spring unless you adjust ride height to the shocks maximum extension. Once you reach this point, ride height is no longer changing, but you are then compressing the spring, creating preload (force). I'm not sure who would ever want to do this.

[besherman]

Can anyone tell me how the Pedders set up compares to the ones on the SLP Camaro, the Lingenfelter Camaro and the Callaway Camaro? I'm more interested in the differences one would notice in actual street driving along twisty mountain roads than differences on the track.


Thanks,
Bruce

[JusticePete]

Originally Posted by robertway

I do follow you here with one exception. In the picture you post above it is obvious that the upper and lower perches are parts of two different structural parts and there fore (extreme example) when the coilover is not installed on the car there is no pre-compression on the spring because any attempt by the spring to expand will be allowed because it doesn't sit between two fixed points and will be allowed to expand until it can no longer overcome the resistance of the damper (hang with me here I am trying to speak suspension techie and probably failing but you get the picture). If I loosen the top perch, essentially running the perch higher on the tube then the result I would expect is the car to lower and the coil length be the same as it was at the higher ride height and the function of the spring remains the same, the car is just a bot lower. The only thing I can gather is the pre-compression you speak of would just prevent the spring from flopping around when there is no load at all on the spring such as in an "airborne" scenario or extreme unweighting of one of the corners. I am guessing that is where the helper spring comes into play in that picture as well given the chance that given enough duration of unloading the distance between the upper and lower perches might have the opportunity to be greater than the length of the uncompressed spring.

I do also see what you mean by if you were to lower the car enough it brings the top mono tube much closer to the bump stop and possibly limiting the travel range of the unit but I wonder if a ride height that low would ever be required or even functional on the Camaro.

The fixed point at full droop, the wheels hanging at full damper extension is a fixed point as in a fixed distance. In the case of the ccoilover pictured in my post, the brand x coilover is using a helper spring to keep the main coil in the seat at full extension. That has NOTHING to do with the preload on the coil at rest at side height. There will be an optimal spring perch setting on a coilover that adjust height by spring perch for optimal function of the entire unit. Optimal function is determined by coil function, damper stroke and jounce travel. moving the ride height adjusting spring perch 25mm high or 25mm lower degrades the performance of the entire unit, in part because of the changes made to the coil at rest.

Put a coil into a load cell. A typical measure of coil strength / rate is pounds per inch. Deviating from the sweet spot on the coilovers for best operation has made the coil looser by an inch / 25mm or tighter by an inch / 25mm. It isn't hard to do the mat given this information.

At Pedders we deal with 2 to 5mm of preload AT FULL DROOP. In a coilover that adjusts by spring perch the same measurement with be 10 TO 20 times that amount. As I said before, we used to make coilover that adjusted by spring perch. It was our best technology at the time. Now we use a true racing style coilover to maintain jounce / bound travel and coil pre-load regardless of ride height.

This pictures shows both the assembled and burst ZETA Rear Coilovers / Struts. There is preload in the OE assembly BEFORE it goes into the vehicle.



The same is true of the fronts.



Here is an absolute eXtreme coilover that we used to use. It adjusted ride height by raising or lowering the spring perch. It used a helper spring. It was better than the OE strut assembly but is no where near as good as the Xa or Supercar for all the reasons already listed in the thread.



The old style rear Xa for ZETA used a longer wind for the rear coil to avoid the helper / keeper spring. It still adjusted ride height by spring perch with all the associated negatives.



There is NO benefit to adjusting ride height by raising and lowering spring perches. There are ONLY negatives. That is why we developed our Xa range -- state-of-the-art technology with excellent ride quality and excellent performance. Our goal could not be met with the dated eXtreme technology or any system that required the spring perch movement for ride height adjustment.

[JusticePete]

Originally Posted by besherman

Can anyone tell me how the Pedders set up compares to the ones on the SLP Camaro, the Lingenfelter Camaro and the Callaway Camaro? I'm more interested in the differences one would notice in actual street driving along twisty mountain roads than differences on the track.


Thanks,
Bruce

Bruce,

You are asking a very biased person to answer this question. My answer would be that only the Pedders setup is a GMPP part. I would like to think that GMPP is impressed by our quality of part, quality of ride and level of performance. When GM decided to build a body in white circle track race car with Circle Track magazine they selected Pedders as the suspension of choice.

What differences would you find -- ride quality and control would be superior IMO. If we look at track numbers, they speak for themselves.

At some point the discussion has to end and the performance must be proven on track. Here are the results from the Motor State Pro Touring Challenge. This list includes the Suspension Manufacturer's Pro Touring Cars built to demonstrate how well their suspension parts perform.



The Pedders lap time if from last October. We ran at Gingerman jut a few weeks ago in weather and track conditions similar to the Pro Touring Challenge. We are faster now than we were then. we run 100% OEM transmission, driveline, differential, half-shafts and suspension arms. We do NOT run a single chassis brace on the Camaro. Not one.

Pedders Camaro runs RACE CAR SPEEDS on STREET TIRES. We don't compare our Camaro to street cars. We compare our 5th Gen Pedderised Camaro to RACE CARS.

http://forums.peddersusa.com/imageho...5c61975f6c.jpg

For the record, Pedders used FOUR chassis braces on the Mustang, because that is what the Mustang requires. The Camaro does NOT require a single brace to perform like a race car under the mot demanding conditions.

[Synergy SATX]

I will buy some Pedders products if someone can answer this question:

What kind of bear is best?


Also do Pedders SS brake lines work on V6s? I ask here since this question went unanswered over on the stop faster thread. These will be my firstest Pedders products if they do.

[JusticePete]

Originally Posted by Synergy SATX

I will buy some Pedders products if someone can answer this question:

What kind of bear is best?


Also do Pedders SS brake lines work on V6s? I ask here since this question went unanswered over on the stop faster thread. These will be my firstest Pedders products if they do.

I am afraid the Pedders lines were developed for the SS and are not for use on the V6. As to which kind of bear is best there can be only once correct answer ...