Suspension woes

Well, after getting BigBlue back on the road I have been able to free up some room on the drive to get DeepBlue up on the axle stands and try and sort out this nightmare suspension thang going on with my car.

As you may remember, I had a bit of a knock on the front suspension which turned out to be worn shock absorber bushes, so I took the opportunity to invest in some nice suspenders and springs.

Now, I have never disliked the handling of my TF, in fact, I rather liked it. On this basis, I was expecting to take a step up the ladder into better handling and stance. I opted for the least lowering kit I could buy as I didn't want it to ground on every speed hump and I quite liked the way it looked.

Sooo. I fitted the suspension and was overcome by huge waves of disappointment. In fact, due to this mod I have lost a bit of love for my baby as she now just doesn't look right. It also took me about 2 weeks of fiddling with the 20 odd adjustments on the shock absorbers just to get it somewhere near what it was before.

The kit was advertised to lower the car by 12.5mm. That I could live with.

However, it seemed to lower the rear by 50mm and actually seemed to raise the front??

To give you some idea, here is a pic before I fitted the new suspension:





This is it after the new suspension.





First of all I thought that maybe I had the wrong shock absorbers, but I confirmed with the manufacturer that I had the correct units front and rear. So, that left the springs.

I seemed to remember that I fitted the long springs to the front and the short ones to the rear. When I mentioned this, a lot of people said the long springs should go to the rear, so it has been playing on my mind that they may have been packaged wrongly.

So, I whipped of the front and rear offsides and compared them.

The fronts were indeed longer than the rears.



So, had I fitted them wrongly? Not according to the writing underneath, assuming F means front and R means rear.



The rears, although shorter, are thicker metal.

I compared the heights with the old springs, which are 7 years and 60k miles older and they seem roughly the same height. The new ones say +10%, which I take to mean 10% stiffer springs. Bearing this in mind, it would make no sense that the rear would sit any higher with the old springs on as the older ones should compress more under the weight of the car.

However, that is what I did. I fitted the old rear spring to the new shocker (minus the spacer) and the car now sits noticably higher at the rear.



So, if the weather is OK tomorrow, I will take the front off and fit the old front spring and see if the front of the car comes down.

I really can't get my head around it. I just want a car that doesn't look like it has a body in the boot and a bonnet full of hellium balloons.

Anyone got any suggestions?

At the minute it looks like I might be buying a set of standard springs just so the car sits level.

Clive,
can't help with the correct setup. But could you please add the measures of the springs
I've got the idea to build a little database and doing some calculations with the existing types of springs (spring rate etc)
Even the material used is unknown, it could give some ideas what could be done.
All measures in mm, count of wounds including fractions (0.25 ; 0.5 ; 0.75), but the active wounds only.
The resulting ride height as measured at the old MGF (about 340mm/350mm front/rear). Distance from the whell center to the upper lead of the wheel house.

type	wire Diameter	outer Diameter	active wunds	unload spring height	ride height front/rear
Standard front	xx mm	yy mm	6.5?	zzz mm	3xx mm
Standard rear	xx mm	yy mm	6.5?	zzz mm	3xx mm
blue -15 front	xx mm	yy mm	7.0	zzz mm	3xx mm
blue -15 rear	xx mm	yy mm	6.75?	zzz mm	3xx mm

I will see what I can do.

Obviously the standard springs have been on the car for 7 years, so they may be a little compressed. I will measure them anyway. It might not be until next weekend now.

While I'm here.

Anyone had any experience of these springs? http://www.rimmerbros.co.uk/Item--i-RP1173XP

Do they lower by much?

Heard of: The Eibach kit is said to lower the car by 20mm