C4 Coil over/Spring rate question
Thread Starter
Melting Slicks
Joined: Oct 2006
Posts: 2,238
Likes: 10
From: College Station TX
C4 Coil over/Spring rate question
Instructor
Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 161
Likes: 0
From: Pittsburgh Penna.
Do you know what brand of coilovers you're going to use? When I did mine I found this info from a post in another forum by Dick Guldstrand.
http://www.digitalcorvettes.com/foru...ad.php?t=35780
http://www.digitalcorvettes.com/foru...ad.php?t=35780
Thread Starter
Melting Slicks
Joined: Oct 2006
Posts: 2,238
Likes: 10
From: College Station TX
Do you know what brand of coilovers you're going to use? When I did mine I found this info from a post in another forum by Dick Guldstrand.
http://www.digitalcorvettes.com/foru...ad.php?t=35780
http://www.digitalcorvettes.com/foru...ad.php?t=35780
Melting Slicks
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 2,719
Likes: 60
From: Fremont Oh
Hi mojave,
You can look at my website . ( see my sig below) I also have a 96 but running QA1's.
Irregardless it pretty much works out that you need to be the same in terms of what spring rate you would need.
Here is a very good spring rate calculator :
http://www.proshocks.com/calcs/imotion.htm
I punched in the following (a) 15 (b) 12 desired ball rate as 650 to be comparable to the rate you are running. It gave me 1015 which sounds about right. For sometime I was running 600 which gave me about 380 at the ball joint. The folks running 450s are actually getting about 290 at the wheel . This is do to the angle of the shock and spring.
Feel free to PM or email me if you like... I have been running coilovers for about 5 years now.
Best regards,
MO
You can look at my website . ( see my sig below) I also have a 96 but running QA1's.
Irregardless it pretty much works out that you need to be the same in terms of what spring rate you would need.
Here is a very good spring rate calculator :
http://www.proshocks.com/calcs/imotion.htm
I punched in the following (a) 15 (b) 12 desired ball rate as 650 to be comparable to the rate you are running. It gave me 1015 which sounds about right. For sometime I was running 600 which gave me about 380 at the ball joint. The folks running 450s are actually getting about 290 at the wheel . This is do to the angle of the shock and spring.
Feel free to PM or email me if you like... I have been running coilovers for about 5 years now.
Best regards,
MO
Thread Starter
Melting Slicks
Joined: Oct 2006
Posts: 2,238
Likes: 10
From: College Station TX
Thanks for the info. One quesiton: how do you know the ball joint rate with the factory leaf spring is 650 lbs/in? I know the spring comes out to 660, does the motion ratio not affect it as well? This is my main sticking point: I'm not sure what my ball joint rate actually is.
Melting Slicks
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 2,719
Likes: 60
From: Fremont Oh
The base springs are about 296 lbs/in and the Z51 are about 380.
If the car is at the stock height the the motion ratio should stay the same.
The length of the lower control arm does not change but the shock angle could if the car is dropped.
If you take the stock 296 and add the 64% it puts the stock spring at about 485. the Z51 380 would end up at about 623.
So I do believe that if you take the 660 which seems to be a known number divide it by 1.64 will put you at about 402...
Mo
If the car is at the stock height the the motion ratio should stay the same.
The length of the lower control arm does not change but the shock angle could if the car is dropped.
If you take the stock 296 and add the 64% it puts the stock spring at about 485. the Z51 380 would end up at about 623.
So I do believe that if you take the 660 which seems to be a known number divide it by 1.64 will put you at about 402...
Mo
