Proper spring preload adjustment

[anoolite76]

At the track yesterday, someone suggested that I DO NOT pay attention to making the chassis level on my car. He told me I should make sure that both springs are identical with respect to the adjusters. His argument was the spring will be compressed more on one side if you try to level it out, and you will have a greater spring constant because you compressed the spring, causing the car to be out of balance. I disagree, because it's relative to the side of the chassis. One side is heavier, so one side needs more preload to balance correctly. I wouldn't say that out loud to avoid seeming argumentative. What do you guys think?

[sosidge]

Originally Posted by anoolite76

and you will have a greater spring constant because you compressed the spring

He's wrong on this point. The spring constant is just that, a constant within the normal action of that spring.

The only time you might get some strange phenomena pre-loading an RC car shock spring is where you pre-load it to such a massive extent that the suspension is locked at maximum extension and needs extra force to actually start any compression. But you would be mad to do this as it ruins the handling.

The pre-load you would normally use to set ride height will have no effect.

Whether or not you ought to have different pre-load on each shock to give even corner weights on the car is not one I can answer. I have never found the buggies to be as sensitive as the on-road cars in this respect, however it will probably do no harm as long as the car tracks straight and turns evenly both left and right.