Adjusting tein springs

[conaboy]

Trying to lower the ride height a little and not sure if im doing it right. I've got two spanners that adjust rings at the bottom of the springs.

Guessing you just tighten up the ring closest to the spring and that lowers the ride height, then bring the one under it up to secure it?

Tried this earlier and it wont budge. Do you have to compress the spring with some sort of tool first then bring the ring up to hold it?

[Springie]

1. To lower :
-Jack car up
-remove tyre (can do it with it on if you really want)
-use your c-spanner to loosen bottom 'ring'
-use c-spanner to loosen top ring i.e anti-clickwise and drop ring down the thread.
- once desired height is reached tighten bottom ring up to top ring
- wheel back on and drop car down then move the car so the wheel goes back to alignment
- repeat for all 4, i always measure the height too so i get all corners equal.

2. to raise :
exactly the same but tighten the rings which will be quite a bit harder then lowering it.

[conaboy]

I thought loosening the ring would raise the car?

Was trying to tighten it and wasn't getting anywhere, shouldn't be too bad loosening it off

I'll give this a try tomorrow

Cheers for the info

[ritch_w]

tightening it will compress the spring and raise it too a point.
loosining will let the spring expand (too a point) and therefore lower it slightly

[Spirit]

tightening it will compress the spring and raise it too a point.
loosining will let the spring expand (too a point) and therefore lower it slightly

Isn't it the other way around ?

[Springie]

Isn't it the other way around ?

Nope, does kinda take a bit to get your head around as in theory a shorter / compressed spring will lower a car. On adjustable if you tighten/raise the platform/ring then the spring still has its tension and pushes the shock up (to a point), if you loosen the ring then the tension gets less of the spring and the shock goes lower as well as the spring.

Bit hard to describe but hopefully you can understand that, or else just remember tighten for up and loosen for down, as thats just how it is

[Kenneth]

springs are measured by how far they deflect given an applied weight

for instance, a spring may deflect (in a compression spring, this means be compressed) 1mm per 5Kg of weight (should probably use force and newtons... but hey)

Put a 400Kg weight on the spring and you would get a deflection of 80mm. So, if your car weighs 400Kg per corner (on the springs, for simplicity), and you had these spring in then your ride height would be 80mm lower than your full spring travel. (this travel is called static sag, the amount the spring sags under the weight of the vehicle while the vehicle stationary)

The idea in adjustable platforms is that you can pre-load the spring (pre-compress) without adding any weight (this is what the platforms do) and therfore at full shock extension the spring can be compressed.

So, if you compress the spring 40mm with the platforms, you essentially add 200Kg of weight to the spring. In coil over suspension that does not include seperate height adjustment, this means the first 200Kg of weight would not cause the car to deflect the spring.
Result is the car sits higher in relation to the road.

This means that you can change individual height of each corner and make the car level.

Say the front right corner weighs 420Kg and the front left weighs 390Kg.
Difference is 30Kg.
To make the car sit level at the front, you would put 30Kg of preload on the front right spring so that the first 30Kg of force essentially does not deflect the spring. Result is that both corners drop the same total distance.

If you then add weight evenly, both springs will continue to deflect by the same amount, as dictated by the spring rate. This means that over bumps, the car wil handle correctly.

Ideally coilovers would have seperate preload and height adjustment, as the function of preload goes further than adjusting height.

[Springie]

Awesome write up Kenneth, very in depth and informative