[Land-speed] suspension

[Adin, David]

Thank you!

David in Durango

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Turk [mailto:kturk at ala.net]
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2007 6:11 PM
To: Wester Potter; Adin, David
Cc: land-speed at autox.team.net
Subject: Re: [Land-speed] suspension

I've had an air ride system for many years on the Camaro... there are
advantages and disadvantages...

My original reason was to aid me in putting it on the trailer...also to
help
put a jack under the car,  a hidden upside was that I could measure bag
pressure to roughly determine downforce on the front and rear of the
car....but it also has a couple of down sides...   The deal is if you
loose
air pressure it can cause a sudden decrease in ride height.

When designing one of these systems you need to determine how stiff you
want
the car to be... in our case the bags come in the form of "Shockwaves"
from
Air Ride technology's which have the shock and air bag combined in a
single
unit.... and thier length is set from the factory.... position in the
car
determines the amount of pressure in the bag at the correct ride
height....
I've found that stiffer suspensions in my cars has worked fairly well
and to
do that with an air ride system we've been keeping the pressure around
80-100 psi.  that doesn't leave a lot of room to actually raise the car
from
a lowered or race position...

Real world travel is around 4" at the maximum psi of around 150psi....

Shock valve settings are also relatively stiff in these units... so they

dampen fairly well...

The last thing to remember is that toe, and camber settings change on an
A
frame front end based on right height at the time....  so we always
string
the car prior to racing after extended trailering.

Keith