This whole bumpstop fiasco is making me really nervous as I drive mk2.5

I did not buy dual perch design to do lame pre-load on springs

Lets hope I will find sweet spot not to hit bumpstops without preloading springs.

Otherwise let the quest for better chosen bumpstops begin (welcome FCM) or new springs rates or new suspension which would be a bit of drama.

Damn a lot of badly maintained roads in my area...

 

Its not a fiasco by any means!. - id go as far to say as every Meister R owner would still reccomend the setup as a testament to that.

 

Thanks MeisterR,

I do understand that the pre-load effects the ride height, which can be adjusted via the dual perch design.

I was more concerned that posters were assuming that preload implied "stiffening" of the suspension which is not the case.

Julie.

 

Thanks for clearing a few things up (and sorry if I muddied the water with my misundestanding

)

My suspension tuning experience is limited pretty much to 1:10 scale RC racing and I'm not particularly good at that either!

However if my NB does suffer from bump-stop issues at the rear then a little extra preload may be enough to stop it. I guess there'll be plenty enough rebound travel to play with before it starts lifting wheels over big bumps!

My Meisters are currently in the company's warehouse over the road, I'll pop over there at lunch to pick 'em up

 

Am I right in saying that by dialing some preload in, it put more enegery into the spring so initial compression requires more force - so the car does get stiffer?

 

Toby,

That's not my understanding. Preload does indeed put energy into the spring, but this is overcome by the natural weight of the car sitting on its suspension, so provided the preload doesn't exceed the corner weight of the car (and you have linear coil springs- most are) you should not notice any difference to the springing characteristics.

Julie.

 

So what is the dissadvantage to adding opreload, obviously if you go to far you become coil bound but there still must be giving something up by adding say 15mm of preload on?

 

I'm sure someone more knowledgable will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there is any disadvantage from dialling in pre-load. In fact, on more traditional coil overs this technique is used to adjust ride height. The only disadvantage that I can see is that you alter the bump/rebound travel ratio which could result in the damper becoming fully extended on rebound.

If you look at the link that Kari has posted (post at top of this page), I think this explains the theory very well.

Julie.

 

Fitted mine today ,very pleased .Ride height out of the box is good ,its quite subtle so may not be to all you young peoples liking innit.

Fitting was very straight forward (the fitting guides and videos on you tube watched and genned up on in advance)just make sure you drown the bolts to be removed in penertrating fluid for days in advance.
Only problem i had was that one of the captive nuts in the rear wishbone ,bottom mount for the strut,became un -captive and was spinning with the bolt .A quick phone call to someone who knows revealed the solution and enabled me to squeeze a 17mm spanner through a very narrow hole in the wishbone to hold it be carefull not to lose it in the wishbone , selotaped the nut to the spanner when doing it up again new strut fitted.I also replaced the roll bar drop links front and back .

Had a quick shakedown drive checking for any clonks etc but it all felt very nice set at 8 front and 6 back ,was as comfy if not more so than my old standard set up and doing the drop links has got rid of an annoying clunk from the near side.

Will report back tomorrow when i have a few more miles with them and have had more time playing with the settings.

First impressions are looking good though.

 

Very happy with the ride improvement these have offered, however intial turn in is not as responsive as my old SAF (Stiff as F**k) springs were.

Assume solution to this would be to add a bit of preload?

 

All adding 'preload' will do is add height, unless you're already at the full extent of damper rebound. (hopefully not)

 

I thought it would mean more weight is required to initially get the car rolling, thus impriveing the feel on turn in?

 

No; have a look at my link at the top of this page. Say you add 10mm of preload on a 6kgf/mm spring you've only got 60kgf of stored energy but once you pop 250kgs of vehicle mass on that corner, that 'preload' is essentially overcome and the fitted length of the spring is the same as with no preload. As Spark says, you're just changing the ride height and altering the bump/rebound travel ratio in the process.

With any suspension, the initial control function is not the spring or ARB as there's little movement in the suspension to compress the springs by a significant amount. It's the acceleration that the damper sees (weight transfer should be controlled on the rebound stroke, therefore the opposite side to the roll moment) and the subsequent damper rate that will make a difference to response. You'll need to increase the 'click' value on the damper and see if that makes a difference. Without having a dyno of how the adjustment 'stiffness' changes the damper rates and/or stiffness you'll have to try a few different settings.

I've PM'd you re the other.

Ta
Phil

 

This evening I bumped up the pre-load on the rear by 10mm as advised earlier in the thread.

It's a bit too early to tell for sure but I think it's done the trick. A quick razz round the block has shown that the car is alot more compliant over crap urban roads. I still need to play with damping as previously I was running 20ish all round, felt great on open roads but not ideal in town lol.

 

As said in previous posts, adjusting the preload should make no difference to handling. All you are doing is adjusting the ride height and the bump/rebound travel ratio. The ride height can then be adjusted back to normal by the second perch. The springs are linear and any preload is overcome by the corner weight of the car.

Julie.

 

Hi All, just thought I'd provide an update on mine since I reported the bouncing and bumpstops issues earlier.

Whilst I haven't played with the preload yet (am still planning on adding 10mm) I tweaked the damping up to Fr 20, Rr 18 yesterday for a run up the coast to Holkham/Sheringham. As anyone who knows the area will know, the roads are not the best and apart from my wife complaining a bit about texting and doing her lippy, she agreed that it wasn't an overly-hard ride and stiffening-up the dampers seems to have eliminated the bump-stop issue on all but the biggest bumps. Very Happy.

My dumb question is, do I need to adjust preload all round or is it OK to only adjust on the rear?

And Jerrick......stickers? Any news?

 

As i said earlier in the thread, and to reiterate here - i did just the rear pre-load.

Its pretty much eliminated hitting the bumpstops during normal driving, which also means i can run softer damper settings.. Previously i found myself running damping around 20 to try and minimize the effect - although the ride was choppier on urban roads at this setting it did reduce the good old "thud".

Now i can run the dampers at much lower levels - think im around 8-10 at the moment. the ride is a tad bouncy around town but its much much more comfortable - and im happy in the knowledge that i can dial it out as and when i want to.

 

Hi All,

How much can I expect the ride height to change during the initial bed-in of Zeta-S coilovers? Is 10mm going down a good guess.

I am aiming for 310 front and 320 rear and I am wondering what height should I initially set as usually new coilovers will sag a bit after few days.

Thanks,
seb

 

Jerrick should have accurate figures that'll let you set it allowing for some settlement. Out of interest, why did you settle for that rode height as a target?

 

It seems to be a magic number for a lot people not to scrape.

My aim is to go as low as possible without need to worry about road surface and scraping.

I like to drive fast and not to think about my oil pan which kind of ruins all the fun.

 

Cheers Mr G.....guess I'll just have to stop fanning about and do some tweaking!

Will do it this weekend. BTW....if I drop the height the same as before once I've tweaked the preload, will that negate the need to redo the alignment?

 

if I drop the height the same as before once I've tweaked the preload, will that negate the need to redo the alignment?

Yes. I did the same recently. Now I'm running 12mm preload at rear, and no more bump stop contact. I think I once run out of droop travel, but nothing serious this far.

 

Hi all - have been a bit of a biff.

Have added 10mm of preload to oneside at the rear all fine, but obviously this brought the overall height up too.

So I loosened off the bottom collar, raised it 10mm to counter the added height from the preload.

But then I couldn't work out how to rotate the shock assembly to wind it down...so I brought down the middle locking collar and turned that against the bottom one. That worked, but now I can't undo it as it seems like it's fused itself to the bottom collar.

I'm guessing I just need to get another of the smaller C-Spanners to turn against each other?

Obviously I won't try driving it until it's sorted. but does anyone have any advice?

I fully expect 'biff' comments, so fill your boots, but I wouldn't mind a teeny bit of genuine advice too!

Cheers all.

Tim

 

Hi Tim,

You should like this link

http://www.infinitiscene.com/forum/threads/9351-Adjusting-BC-Coilovers-%28Lowering-Ride-Height%29

Good luck

 

Thanks Sebna.....I will use that advice for the next adjustment, but it doesn't help me sort my current problem!

 

You can just turn the damper into the lower bracket to lower the car once the locking collar is loosen.
The damper piston will "free spin" within the damper case so you can turn it.

A bit of an old video, but see if this helps.

http://www.meisterr.com/Site/Tutorial.html

 

Hi Guys,

Been a while, but finally got to having a good run in the ole MX. The rears are sat at 10mm preload, fronts are just static. Front damping sat at 12, rears at 16. It feels superb and so much more controlled over those heavy bumps.

Well worth fiddling & has now become a usable car. Don't get me wrong, hitting the heavy bumps, you do feel it, lol, it just does not bottom out like it was.

Cheers, Shane

 

Well today I managed to sort my seized collars problem, so the rears have been set with 10mm preload and as sparkz has done, I've left fronts at zero preload.

But....I've noticed that you've set yours with a softer setting at the front, which goes against most other posts about damper settings, which state a trend towards being slightly stiffer at the front for sharper handling.

Now have you done this because of the rear preload? Mine's on 14 front, 12 rear at the moment as for my first run out this afternoon it felt way too soft on 10/8.

Cheers

 

Hi All

Thanks for the video Jerrick - It shows me what I did wrong and what I need to do on the other side.

However - I still can't unstick my 2 small collars.....yes I've been fick, but I wan't to sort it!

Therefore....would someone mind lending me their small C-Spanner please? If you're remotely local to Marham/Kings Lynn then I'll collect, otherwise could someone post me one and I'll of course repay the postage when I return it.

It's killing me not being able to drive it in this glorious weather, so the sooner the better!

Alternatively, if anyone out there is having a glorious Saturday/Sunday Drive and fancies a cuppa, then please pop over to RAF Marham and give me a hand!!!

Cheers All

Rgds

Tim

 

The damping setting also offset the balance of the car.
So when you have the rear slightly stiffer, the rear will be more lively so to speak.
If you have it softer, the rear will try to grip a bit harder and there be more stable.

It depends on what you want, that is the whole point of having an adjustable dampers because it allows the driver to tune the car to their driving style.
It is not uncommon to have harder rear damping because some driver prefer more "neutral" or even "lively" rear end...

 

Cheers Gents, will leave mine as is then. BTW - had a run along the stretch of road that bounced me around at 60 before adjustment.....took it at 80 with no problems today. Much better.

So thanks for all the advice - I'm really chuffed with them now.

 

Awsome looking peice off kit wish I had some cash for a set

 

These look like realy nice units , where are they actualy made ? just interested

 

When people are talking about how many clicks, is that from soft or hard??