Hey everyone! Steve at QA1. So you've got coil-overs on your car maybe they're not
riding so hot. There are three things that we want to look at to make a
determination on what the problem might be that's what we're going to talk about
today.
(Music)
So you've got a car, it's not riding that well with your coil-overs,
maybe you just purchased this car and it's got unknown coil-overs on it that's
a typical one. But there's three things that we need to check when a coil-over is
not riding correctly. These are important to figure out before you go on to
purchase another set of coil-overs. The first thing that you'll want to check is
your shock length at ride height. Every shock is going to have a recommended
length at ride height so that you have sufficient downward as well as upward
travel. If you are riding a shock near its full-bottomed out point and you keep
hitting that during your operational drive you will definitely feel that and
it's not gonna ride well. On the other side of things if you're near the top
and your car rebounds and hits that topping out point we'll call it that is
going to be another situation where that coil-over does not ride well at all and
that could be the one culprit. What we're looking for is two inches of available
downward travel and two inches of upward travel. Now every QA1 shock if you know
the part number of it has a recommended length at ride health at ride height. So
we'll go under the car and we will measure center to center at the eyelets
and that will be your length at ride height compare that with the part number
that you have and there you have it. Now if you have a set of coil-overs that you
don't know what the part number is, they're not QA1,
you're not sure what they are. That one you'll want to go under the car measure
your ride height so you know where you're sitting this is with the car or
truck on the ground and then you'll take one of them off. Now that you've got your
length at ride height you can fully compress that shock and take your
measurement and then fully extend it just looking at the math will tell you how
much compression and rebound travel you have
before that shock is at fully bottomed out or fully topped out. That's the
first one and it's a big one. I'll get a customer that calls on the phone and
says I don't know what these shocks are but they're not riding well and I took
them off and they're 10 inches compressed and 14 extended what do you
have. And I'll say no no no that's not the way to go about that because I don't
know that your car isn't riding at 11 inches and your whole problem was you
didn't have enough travel in that shock. So definitely measure your shock length
at ride height or figure out what you need it to be and then compare it to the
shock that you have and figure out if you've got enough travel in the shock.
So once you have the length of the shock calculated and figured out that you have
enough travel you're gonna want to move on to your spring rate. Spring rate is
another one that can get you with rough riding coil-overs and what we're
basically looking to do is have 25 to 30 percent of your spring be compressed
with just the weight of the vehicle. That's on a streetcar is 25 to 30 about
30 to 35 on a drag car. So if you're using a 12-inch spring that 30% is a
different amount of spring than you if you're using a 10-inch spring. So it's
really important for you to know what your spring's free length is. And before
you take it off the car, measure the height of that spring with just the
weight of the car sitting on the down on the ground everything good to go. You
pull that spring off if you are fortunate enough to know what spring
rate you're using then you can just do the calculation and it's an easy fix to
figure out if you do need a different spring rate but basic checking of the
spring rate is 25 to 30 percent of the spring's free length for a streetcar.
So the third item on our list is going to be the shock valving itself. We've got
our shock length in check our spring rate looks okay the next item on our
coil-overs riding bad list would be the shock valving adjustment. This could be a
matter of the shock valving has just turned up too high which is giving you
that rough ride so we'll want to check that make sure you know what setting
you're on. And if it is on the firmer side you can turn
back to the soft side there's nothing that says you can't ride our QA1 shocks
on the full soft setting. So you could turn it back to the full soft and see
how the ride is from there. So if you have any questions about your setup or
found the issue and you want to talk about QA1 coil-overs for your ride. Give
us a call at the tech line you can also find all of our products on QA1.net
and thanks for watching!
(Music)