suspension design (stress questions)

[stanglou]

I am doing initial stress testing on solid works on my coilover suspension and i was wondering what kind of forces in pounds occur at the spindle, ball joints, frame mounts, and shock mounts. what is a good initial weight to test at to ensure that it wont fail.
thanks for your help.
louie

[Mean 69]

I'd be very, very cautious about taking advise over the internet on such a critical topic. If you have a good ME friend, he/she will be able to give you some good guidelines. Solidworks/COSMOS is an awesome tool, it can tell you a ton and save a lot of development time, but you need to really understand what is going on, what assumptions are being made, and what the model tells you in order to use it effectively. Not trying to be a bad guy at all, but engineering suspension and brake parts is serious stuff.

Mark

[stanglou]

very true, in the future when it gets closer to the time to machine, i will definitally do that. right now i am simply designing, and want to have an idea or a ballpark figure so that later the design wont be unfixable. I hate doing things over completely.