Coilover Recommendations

[marolf101x]

Ride quality is simply the measurement of how much the passenger moves, or what the passenger feels inside the vehicle. . .what forces are transmitted to the person.

Ride quality is also subjective, with each person having a slightly different expectation of what it should be.



Let's look at a couple of typical scenarios while driving the vehicle and explain what is happening and what is responsible for ride quality (or lack thereof). . .

Slow undulations and road irregularities:

The suspension should dissipate the slow undulations in the road via the wheel moving up and down while the cabin does not move (this is called SkyHook suspension theory).

This is done mostly with shock/spring force and travel. Enough travel provides enough time to slow the wheel/tire before it transmits into the vehicle.





Sharp "ledges" or transitions:

If the spring rate is not terribly stiff the. . .the tire, shock and bushings are mainly responsible for quick but short events (cracks in the pavement, bridge expansion joints, etc). This movement is very low, maybe only 1/4", but the speed is high, maybe 1M/second (32 inches/second).

Did the tire soak up some of the force, or is it a very short, stiff sidewall?

What's the shock graph look like? If it has a ton of low speed force it'll feel much more "rough" than a shock that has low force in low speed and slowly ramps up in force as speed increases.

Were the bushings "soft" with a lot of movement so they could slow down and neutralize the motion, or were they stiff and transferred that motion into the solid structure of the vehicle?



All that being said, the things that make good ride quality hurt performance; and high-performance hurts ride quality.