Keith;
When you are taking baseline static ride height data, be sure to bounce
the car up & down a few times to eliminate as much of the "stiction" of
the shocks and suspension bushings as possible.
Don't forget to have a load of fuel aboard as well as the driver! Once
you have the baseline done you'll need to either calibrate or calculate
the effective wheel rates of the springs. You can calibrate the spring
rate by adding carefully weighed sacks of sand to the front & rear body,
bouncing the chassis a few times and recording the new value read by the
potentiometer. Add another couple of bags of sand and repeat the process
a few more times.
The reason for doing this in multiple steps is that the effective wheel
rate of the springs is not linear. Since the angle of the springs change
as the suspension is loaded, it affects the wheel rate and makes it
non-linear.
Regards, Neil Tucson, AZ
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-land-speed@autox.team.net
[mailto:owner-land-speed@autox.team.net] On Behalf Of Keith Turk
Sent: Saturday, June 19, 2004 11:54 AM
To: land-speed@autox.team.net
Subject: Potentiometers...? ( who cares how it's spelled )
...
With the new suspension in the Sportsliner... I really wanted to know
something about how much downforce it had and if in fact it was
increasing at
speed or not... and I wanted to know how much the car was unbalanced
when the
parachute comes out.... to do that Dave has come up with 4
potentiometers
that measure distance...they are about 10" long retracted and around 14"
long
extended...( if you want exact I'll get the numbers for you ) I'm going
to
mount them right along side of the Coil overs and then calibrate them to
know
the altitude of the body at all times..... and ultimately with the
Coil
overs I'll know how much downforce it's creating as a result of the air
pressure when it's at Speed....
|