How do you limit suspension travel?

I had the Celica on the lift tonight and one of the rear springs was not seated on it's perch correctly. Not a huge deal, but it would be nice to keep the springs seated when I lift the car. It's a solid rear axle. Can you use straps like the 4WD guys use, or will they tear off during an autocross run?

Thanks,

Ed

Drive gently. Don't hit big bumps.

That's one idea. Won't win a lot of races that way though. I'll think about it. But, you know, if anyone has another idea...

cables, straps, or chains in the shock bolts.

Straps will work fine. Just make sure you anchor them so they don't slide around.

Oh, and for just lifting the car, you can use those gigantic zip ties to keep the springs in their perches.

Thats the problem,you need to allow the axle more rotation relative to the chassis to keep inside wheel lift to a minimum.I ran trd race springs for a couple years and then built my own coilover bits for the rear,then there's no worry of losing a spring and you can run stiff'ish tenders to help provide some down pressure on the inside wheel. The alternative is to stiffen it to the point roll is reduced to around 3 degrees max,to do that means decent dampers or it all goes to hell in a handbasket.

Having said that,my car was best with no sways and soft springs-350f and 250r.Keep in mind my car was much lighter than yours,the rear spring was closer to the wheels reducing motion ratio and my rear roll center was lowered. This is my car with the above set-up mid corner,not much roll for soft springs no bars.

Helper springs. Get something with a decent rate - 100 lbs instead of 5 lbs, for example. They'll help extend the suspension without limiting droop travel.

possibly running a short stroke rear shock will limit total suspension travel

The problem with physically "limiting" suspension travel in the up position is when you suddenly hit that limit. No different than hitting the bump stops, rarely is it considered a good thing, and limiting the "stretching" suddenly will cause wonky-ass behaviour.

Limiting straps are dynamic so it should be a gradual slowdown, like a hitting a GOOD bumpstop.

In reply to fast_eddie_72:

I think the solution depends on what you are trying to prevent. Is it just when the car is lifted off the ground, say with a jack or driving over a speed bump, that you want to limit the droop and the springs coming off the perches or do you suspect this is happening while racing?

In the first case, this issue is you just have more shock travel (I assume the shocks are what stop the droop) than needed, and anything that simply checks the droop will work (e.g. a set of stranded wire cables or fabric straps). In the second case, you probably dont want to suddenly limit the droop where the springs come off the perch as that will have a very sudden impact on how your car handles as it hits the droop limit. A proper length spring and/or shorter shock is the right solution. If that is not possible, a common solution with coilovers is to add tender (or helper) spring sets as these allow the added shock travel after the main spring lifts off the perch, has just enough force to keep the main spring against one perch while providing a sliding perch that remains in contact with the main spring. The tender will raise the effective perch by the thickness of the tender spring and "spacer", which with a coilover can be adjusted out. Here are some examples: http://www.livermoreperformance.com/eibach_ers.html

Limiting the amount of travel can be a problem, as others have pointed out. If the car rolls enough, the inside rear tire can come off the ground. On some cars like my old GTi, this meant nothing, you couldn't even tell it was happening. But on live axle cars it at least means loss of traction and as you have seen the springs can fall out of the perches. To keep the springs from coming off the perches I used tenders on the rear coilovers on the Jensenator, dunno if you can do that on your setup.

Tommy's zip tie idea has been used by the mfgs in a different way, the spring has a clamp which holds one end of it to the axle or body mount. That way if the other end does lift off of its mount the spring will go back in the correct spot when the car comes back down. There's usually a rubber snubber etc in the spring to help point it back in the right direction. IIRC the ThunderTerd (our last LeMons car) had that setup on the rear.

When i use to have a corolla gts, the alternative for the trd short stroke damper was camaro rear socks. Stil not as short as the trd but shorter than the stock ones.

From the OP, this does not seem to be a drivability issue so why not make aircraft cables up that attach to the chassis and control arms and only use them on the lift?

My SAAB 96 had straps on the rear axle from the factory.

Tender springs can often be of help here.

Why not use something like these wire clamps to secure the spring into it's perch?

I imagine you could weld in something similar if you can't drill through the perch to bolt these through

I don't see the advantage of limiting suspension travel. Use it! If you're going to put in secondary springs, make sure they have enough rate to be useful. If you can compress them significantly by hand, they're not stiff enough.

Longer springs won't help you. They'll just move your perch down, but you'll still have the same loose spring at full droop. The only time longer springs help is if you're running in to coil bind. Softer springs, however, would help solve the problem but that brings up other difficulties.

mad_machine wrote: Why not use something like these wire clamps to secure the spring into it's perch? I imagine you could weld in something similar if you can't drill through the perch to bolt these through

a spring is VERY dynamic when in action it not only goes up and down, but the coils have some twisting action as well... welding it, or bolting it in will just cause wear and noises.

Thanks everyone-

To be more clear (and bear in mind, I really am a total n00b at all this stuff) the problem is just the springs coming off the perches. This is a solid axle on stock spring perches. The shocks are sigle adjustable Konis intended for a Mustang. They were chosen with the help of someone at Koni to match the kind of spring rate I'm running (though I didn't have the conversation with Koni- I'm benefiting from someone elses R&D there). Last night, the spring had slipped at the bottom and was kind of threading onto the spring perch. I knew something was up just because of the noise. Probably happened while autocrossing on Saturday.

I like the idea of coming up with some sort of clamp for the bottom spring perch. On top, I have a stock rubber ring that seats against the chassis, and there is a cone like mount area that is absolutely huge. That will seat properly every time. So a clamp should probably work pretty well and is probably a lot easier to execute than trying to get a strap figured out at the right length.

It is kind of a pain that I can't really jack the car up from the side. I mean, I guess I could, but I'd have to jack a lot. But jacking on the differential is almost as easy, so not a big deal.

Thanks- I'm learning a lot with all my questions. You guys are great.