Softer ride.

[WokingWedger]

I want to use my car more as a tourer than a racer, and find the ride a bit 'crashy and hard'.

Also as I live in an unmade road, and it grounds a lot, so I would like to increase the ride height just a little.

I have read all about fitting adjustable Nitrons, but I cant afford to throw over a thousand pounds at the car.

As far as I know it is fitted with standard springs and dampers ( 1997 500 Chim)

Any recomendations.

[scotty_d]

you can get the gaz adustable for less than £500 for the set. i will be fitting these over the winter. because i have no oil left in 3 of my dampers.

[dogbucket]

I fitted Gaz nickles recently to replace the originals which I think were still working as well as they ever did as it passed an MOT with them. But they were a bit bouncy sometimes and yet crashed over bumps.

The Gaz are noticeably more comfortable even with them set fairly firm. There are some rough brick rumble speed bump type things on the way into my estate and the gaz have really smoothed those out.

iirc the orignal bilsteins are undersprung but overdamped, whereas most aftermarkets are using stiffer springs but overall give a better ride.

[f@-pots]

I can appreciate your position as I live in an area where the roads are abysmal! Yup, raising the ride hight is the way to go however youll need adjustable shocks to do that. I can recommend Gaz Golds as I had them fitted to mine and it not only enabled me to raise the car up a bit but totally transformed the cars handling. No more grounding out on high camber bits and a much more predictable and compliant ride. It's been fairly well documented on this forum that the factory original shocks are scary beasts especially if they're oldish' so do yourself a big favour all round and fit some proper jobbies. Best of luck..........

Nick......

[Ubernoober]

Had the same problems with my original Bilsteins - till I had new Bilsteins fitted - no more crashing and banging.

The originals had done around 55k miles and the new ones are a vast improvement. Like you, I wanted a ride more akin to a cross-country tourer and after a natter with Bryan at Fernies decided to stick with Bilsteins - certainly had none of the setup issues you read about on these forums.

[TVR-Boy]

Where do you buy Bilsteins or Gaz from?

[Uncle Fester]

If you have a ground clearance problem then don’t forget to change the sump plug for the Steve Heath type, it stops you grounding it and losing the sump plug.

Also if it’s a big problem because of a poor driveway, consider a new sump. The sump sticks sown below the chassis line. Some of the tuning places sell a modified sump that gives more ground clearance.

[coetzeeh]

TVR-Boy said:

Where do you buy Bilsteins or Gaz from?

Absolutleyshocks on 0800 121 4924 - or Gazman on PH.

Derek does good work and will set your car set up to your liking, and he's usually there on a Sunday morning.

[Meatball]

Racing Reds are better than Gaz for similar money

[rev-erend]

OK - Think I'll give a different reply to all the above..

If you want a softer ride - then just change the springs for softer versions.. and keep the existing shocks - so long as they are OK..

Springs are not all that expensive but discuss it with Derek at Absolutely shocks or Trackcar..

[taylormj4]

Hi there,
I found the ride became much smoother / softer when I changed from the original Bridgestone S03 tyres to Toyos - something to do with the tyre sidewalls.

You could look at this as a no-cost option when you next change tyres, i.e. you have to pay for tyres anyway - won't help with the ride height though.

Cheers,
Matthew

[trackcar]

One thing to remember about about how adjustable dampers work at entry level is that the softness you feel by adjusting the adjuster comes from diverting oil away from the valving, and this has more effect on slow wheel movements than high speed wheel movements .. you can open the bleed valve up and divert oil away from the valving but when you ask the wheel to go over a big bump or pothole where you're asking a significant volume of oil to flow through the damper the bleed can reach it's maximum flow rate fairly quickly so you then still have the majority of the damping stiffness coming from the inherent valving design. If you want to gain significant high speed compliance you must address this in the damper valving and don't assume you can get it on the bleed adjuster alone. When you start asking for specific areas of the damping curve to be changed you can only do this with a bespoke valving build or a damper which allows isolated adjustment of the low and high speed characteristic.

[Ab Shocks]

rev-erend said:

OK - Think I'll give a different reply to all the above..

If you want a softer ride - then just change the springs for softer versions.. and keep the existing shocks - so long as they are OK..

Springs are not all that expensive but discuss it with Derek at Absolutely shocks or Trackcar..

I would not advocate changing one aspect of the suspension.
I see many examples of this, i.e old Eibachs on Avo etc.
I see no point in putting lower rate springs on Bilstein shocks because you could easily go way off the damping range and they were only 325lb fr and 250lb rear OEM anyway.