Ride Comfort of Ridetech Coilovers

[marolf101x]

Well, sounds to me like someone who doesn't sell coil overs is spreading rumors of hate and discontent.

Ride Quality:
Ride quality is subjective, but in general to achieve a great ride quality you want a lighter spring rate, very little compression damping, and plenty of suspension travel.
There are a lot of technical details that need to be addressed for a great ride. . .for example, wheel rates and frequencies. If you have a suspension system with an odd frequency the human body will detect that and interpret it as something bad, thereby making the person uncomfortable. Rob McGregor and I were just talking about this the other day, and guess what frequency the human body really likes? The same frequency you encounter when you walk.
Our spring rate calculator has this built-in, working behind the scenes to make sure you get the best possible options for your vehicle. When we first teamed up with Hyperco springs no other spring manufacturer had a calculator like this, and for good reason. . .there's a lot going on!

Suspension Travel:
As stated above, suspension travel is a major factor in achieving a great ride quality (and superb handling, for that matter!). The general rule is that the wheel and tire needs to move 5" from fully compressed to fully extended and that you need 4" of clearance for anything under the car. We like to set our systems so that you have 60% of available travel for compression, and 40% for extension, as the vehicle spends more time on the compression side and the forces are greater. So, when you hit a bump you want 3" of compression travel. You also want enough spring and shock force to slow down and stop the suspension travel before the suspension bottoms out on the bumpstops.



When using a coil over this is actually pretty easy to achieve. . .you move the upper coil over mount up, or the lower coil over mount down. As we interface with the OE chassis at the upper mount (so you don't have to cut and weld) we drop the lower coil over mount down in the control arm. This also provides us the ability to put that mount in double shear, opposed to the crappy t-bar style the OE used for the stock shock.

Coil Overs. . .shocks and springs:
A spring is a spring (when comparing comparable quality pieces). It's primary job is to hold the car up. It's secondary job is to "push" back when the suspension is compressed. By using a slightly lighter spring rate, and adding more preload you end up with a spring that will hold the car up, but not beat you to death when you hit a bump (if you need more info on this, see this post: https://www.pro-touring.com/showthre...-for-69-Camaro)
Shocks can dramatically effect the ride quality and handling of the vehicle. Basically you don't want much compression force. Compression force is just like adding spring rate. Let's take this example. . . you are driving down the road and hit a small bump. The shock (in a 2:1 motion ratio) is moving at a shaft speed of under 6 inches per second (ips). Shock #1 provides 100# of force at 5ips. Shock #2 provides 500# of force at 5ips. Which do you think rides better?
This is a whole other discussion about how to read dyno graphs. We can get into that if you'd like, but for now we'll let this soak in.