front coil overs

[richiep]

Has anybody got any experience wit the red9design front coil over kit?

I have a few "questions" about the kit - I tried a similar kit from the now defunct Legend company on my speedster and it improved front end grip no end, especially braking in the wet but I was always concerned about the kit's safety.

My main concerns were that the weight of the frot of the car was suspended by two points that were not designed to do so - the top of the shock turret and the shock mounting stud that sticks out the lower trailing arm.


Anybody got any thoughts on this? I would like to improve the front end of my bug and the coilovers certainly helped on my speedster but I don't want the front end collapsing in the middle of some high speed bufoonery.


Cheers

[Chris Percival]

Originally posted by richiep
high speed bufoonery

LOL!!

[Alex]

I will let you know in a year. I bought the kit.
My deciding argument for it was........look at the offroaders.

They do more crazy stuff with those beams than I will do in my street car. The top mount will be strengthend.
They told me that they run it in multiple cars and had no problem at all with them.

Alex

[bren]

as alex said, offroaders use a similar setup, jump their cars into the air, land and break nothing.... i'll be buying the kit and fitting it after seam welding the shock tower and gusseting it where it meets the top tube. the lower mounts need nothing.. its a very strong forging, you wont bend or break em on the street.

[richiep]

Cool, as I have said, I have used a very similar setup on my speedster (A legend one, exactly the same as the one on Ricola's Scuby powered chesil) so I can give you some idea of what the kits perform like. Braking in gereral is much improved, you can go a lot harder on the pedal before locking up. Turn in is slightly more wooley than with the standard setup. I kept the same bugpack anti roll bar so I think this is due to the locating of the trailing arms being a little more positive with the standard springs. I'm gonna have a good look at the red9 kit at Dubfreeze next month (if he's there) 'cos I'm not sure about the linkage bars that hold the front end together - the brass thingies on the end look like they'd wear a bit quick to me. How do the offroad boys do that?

Does anybody know of any pictures of offroad coilover setups I can have a look at to see how they've braced up the front beam. All the ones I have seen have had specialist beams on (chenowth I think) or king and link front ends


My car wont see too much street use as its being built for sprint racing and the odd track day so I'm after top handling and I'm not too bothered about ride quality. Any suggestions? I don't wanna do IRS on the rear really - I actually quite like the way swing axle cars handle. I've driven a couple of IRS speedsters and they didn't seem as oversteery - and speed +oversteer = fun!

Cheers

[ricola]

I have used the Legend kit and about the only thing I was happy with is the reduction in spring rate. The springs rubbed on the top trailing arms, the urethane beam bushings were not adequate for lateral location and the threads on the linking rods cut into my tyres on full lock!
But, braking was much improved as a result of better road holding. This is one of the reasons I am developing my wishbone suspension.
So, a friend of mine has bought the red-9 linking bars with different coil-overs but was not happy with the end locations so he redesigned it to locate better in the trailing arms. This was on a 550 spyder replica which doesn't get much use so he can't give any long term feedback.
I had no problems with the beam top mounts, although my speedster is pretty light at the front end to stresses would be reduced.

Rich
PS You obviously haven't been near my car, IRS is no match for the 250bhp in my speedster!

[bren]

Originally posted by richiep
I'm gonna have a good look at the red9 kit at Dubfreeze next month (if he's there) 'cos I'm not sure about the linkage bars that hold the front end together - the brass thingies on the end look like they'd wear a bit quick to me.

funnily enough, he did have problems with those end pieces wearing on customers cars, so he's now modified the kit slightly to incorporate stainless steel end bushings. seems to have solved all the problems!

[Alex]

Bren,

take a look at the suspension gallery and tell me if those are the new endings in the pic of the Red9 kit.

Thanks,
Alex

[verbeekb]

I've looked at the red9design site a few weeks ago. Now with this thread I gave it some more thought. How about removing the center block that holds the torsion-leaves, remove the needle bearings, hone the tubes slightly and make chromoly tubes to fit snugly into the beam tubes and over the machined surfaces of the torsion arms, this may be a certain interference fit, but the tubes must still be able to rotate freely in the beam tubes. Cut them to the proper lenght so that there is virtually no side to side movement. This would provide a way to really tighten the torsion arms without putting a heavy axial load on the beam tubes, except when cornering ... hmmmm .. still thinking .. ..

Another thing might be to use big hardened washers over the trailing arms and over the beam tubes, machined so they fit over the welds and over the radius on the torsion arms, they do not necesarily have to be centered really, then use axial roller bearings in between, I've never seen a sealed type of these though ..

Brian

[richiep]

This is probably real dumb suggestion, but what about fitting sway-aways, slacking them off so the front end is real low, then just fitting coilovers to bring it back up. What would the effects of the two springing systems working against each other be? If you had shocks with seperate re-bound and compression settings, you could wind the re-bound damping up a bit. The original torsion springs are a proven method of locating the trailing arms.

Another probably dumb thought is replacing the block in the middle of the beam with some kind of bearing (a weld in unit like sway-a-ways) that locates the springs in the middle but lets them rotate freely. This way the torsion leaves would act as an anti roll bar but leave the springing up to the coilovers.



Pls don't laugh at my suggestions, I'm no engineer - thats why I'm running it all past you guys before I try anything

[Alex]

I talked to Simon from Red9 today and he told me that they never had problems with the beetle kit only with the Bus kit.
The new system is also much better which I got.

Alex