simon's learning what to do with the polo thread

[sambb]

At the end of the day you could run the stock fronts, maybe add a 22mm whiteline front bar to get a good mix of front roll stiffness from bar and springs and then run your stiff rear srings with that mutant bar. If the rears turn out to be too stiff (its 3 wheeling with the inside rear half a foot in the air) and really overpowering the diagonally opposite front, then go back to the H&R rears and then concentrate on getting rear toe out into it to get it to turn.

[sambb]

Simon I just tried to heat up (read melt!) the ABS sensors to get them to be a little bit straighter for the spacer mod. Hmm not happening. I had the heatgun at 4000 degrees, the plastic was bubbling and hard not to get the plastic to start smoking and it still wouldnt budge. Straight sensors are needed I'm afraid - what were they worth new?

I dig out the nordlocks to send to you. Did you want to bother with the weitecs (only like 12lb/in stiffer than stock fronts)? I'm happy to send them down for you to try if they are boomerangs if it doesnt work.

[simon k]

jeez - plenty of chatter while I've been fiddling with the doors on the mini...

Hang on to the Weitecs Sam, I'd rather work out what springs will make it stiffer while keeping me at the standard height - changing the rear springs is easy, but I don't really want to be pulling the fronts out again and again with trial and error. I'll get all of those springs you and Gav talk about into the same units first! N/mm, kg/mm and lb/in all in the same post!

There's another sprint at the local track coming up in a few weeks, I've done tyres, bilsteins and a tune since last time I was there which ought to see a solid improvement.

The sensors weren't super expensive new, but I wanted to see if they'd fit without too much fiddling before forking out. Bit of a bugger that it wouldn't bend

[simon k]

spring info				calc'd spring rate			spring rate at the wheel
Spring	rate	Units	front/rear	kgf/mm	lbf/in	N/mm	kgf/mm - adj	lbf/mm - adj	N/mm - adj
stock rear	25	N/mm	rear	2.55	142.86	25.00	1.63	91.43	16.00
stock front	25	N/mm	front	2.55	142.86	25.00	2.06	115.71	20.25
sams front	7	kgf/mm	front	7.00	391.98	68.65	5.67	317.51	55.60
sams/gavs rear	8	kgf/mm	rear	8.00	447.98	78.45	5.12	286.71	50.21
front weitecs	27	N/mm	front	2.75	154.29	27.00	2.23	124.97	21.87
gavs front	10	kgf/mm	front	10.00	559.97	98.07	8.10	453.58	79.43
cut honda rear	280	lbf/in	rear	5.00	280.00	49.00	3.20	179.20	31.36
Gary's ideal front	37.5	N/mm	front	3.82	214.29	37.50	3.10	173.57	30.38
Gary's ideal rear	75	N/mm	rear	7.65	428.57	75.00	4.89	274.29	48.00

[sambb]

I'd try to confirm with Gary the front spring rate recommendation because it sounds pretty soft. It could be that perhaps he thought our fronts were stiffer than that? Also its down the list from doing the FARB, so without the bar you may need to go stiffer on the spring. But then again on strut suspension you are going to have to go custom to get a stiffer spring rate and doing trial installs without knowing where your ride heights will end up could wear thin. Thats why when I had the B8's I went straight to the front bar. I must say I have been seriously considering removing the FARB and going back to the OE bar. Its stiff setting is something I just never use. I'd have done it in a heartbeat but there's a lot of work to do it inc setting up the subframe alignments all over again etc. Would probably be easier for me to go to 6kg front springs instead and then I might be able to exploit both my front bars stiffness settings.

[simon k]

yes, the FARB is higher on the list than front springs, but then front camber is above that and much cheaper & easier. I found an online store in Germany that sells good quality TT ball joints and also stock the turbo gaskets. Last night I hunted for the best price on the whiteline 22mm FARB and the best I could find was about $275 which isn't over the top.

here's your 6kg spring added to the table (more for me than for you).

spring info				calc'd spring rate			spring rate at the wheel
Spring	rate	Units	front/rear	kgf/mm	lbf/in	N/mm	kgf/mm - adj	lbf/mm - adj	N/mm - adj
stock front	25	N/mm	front	2.55	142.86	25.00	2.06	115.71	20.25
front weitecs	27	N/mm	front	2.75	154.29	27.00	2.23	124.97	21.87
Gary's ideal front	37.5	N/mm	front	3.82	214.29	37.50	3.10	173.57	30.38
6kg front for Sam	6	kgf/mm	front	6.00	335.98	58.84	4.86	272.15	47.66
sams front	7	kgf/mm	front	7.00	391.98	68.65	5.67	317.51	55.60
gavs front	10	kgf/mm	front	10.00	559.97	98.07	8.10	453.58	79.43
stock rear	25	N/mm	rear	2.55	142.86	25.00	1.63	91.43	16.00
cut honda rear	280	lbf/in	rear	5.00	280.00	49.00	3.20	179.20	31.36
Gary's ideal rear	75	N/mm	rear	7.65	428.57	75.00	4.89	274.29	48.00
sams/gavs rear	8	kgf/mm	rear	8.00	447.98	78.45	5.12	286.71	50.21

Do you you have a stock front spring laying around? do you mind measuring the height and wire diameter for me? I'm digging through catalogues to find something heavier that'll substitute

[sambb]

yeah I have a stock front under the house. I'll dig it out Thursday- that work? I did a spring rate calc thread a while back. I know the wire diameter was in that but non-captive height I'm not so sure. You'll also need front weight over axle. I'll try to send a pic of Gavs corner weights tonight.
Thanks for converting the front 6kg. Good to see it framed against the other rear wheel rates like that.

[simon k]

no rush - it's just that the spring catalogues have the free height and installed height, like this:

Moog Coil Springs | Moog Suspension Parts

you can have the spring spreadsheet if you want

[simon k]

This weekend I put in the superpro lower control arm bushes I bought a couple of months ago, and also did a slightly different version of Sam's Audi TT balljoint modification. I wanted to make sure the balljoints were filed and aligned exactly the same, so I took the subframes out of both sides... I didn't realise that just about everything is held together by them and once you take them out it's pretty a bit of a pain to align it all again - never mind...

I've no idea how much camber I got out of it, not a huge amount, but I tipped the balljoint forward a long way and along with the caster bushes there should be a decent increase

I've also been hunting for a cheap set of 15" wheels for a while. A while ago I discovered that the double headlight Celicas have 5x100 wheels, and one model has 6.5" wheels - a mate has one that he'd given to his nephew, but the nephew wasn't doing anything with it so it was going to go to the scrappers. I grabbed the wheels and it turns out they're 7" wide - 45 offset is a bit narrow but some spacers will fix that. The centrebores are smaller than the hub centre so spacer can fix that too

[sambb]

sorry man I just realised I'd said I'd measure the stock springs free length and forgot. I'll hunt them down tomorrow if you still need me to.