Can some one please clarify the Function of shock and spring?
I have nismo s-tune suspension and hate the bounce. feel like i'm riding without bottemed out shock. Need help ASAP.

 

Koni adjustables will fix that problem.

 

the spring controls the height of the car. the strut/shocks control the ride quality. easiest solution would be to use different struts/shocks, ones with adjustable settings will set it the way u want the ride to feel. but if ur going to spend the money just buy a new set of coilovers. i thought u already bought some??

 

So with stiffer shock setting I'm looking at more bounce?!

 

Rspec,

The OEM shocks are improperly valved and that mismatch to the stock springs causes the bounce. Most who have the S-Tune say that most of the bounce is gone......... The Konis are valved to work with the OEM springs.

 

 

Your springs are what actually suspend the car and provide a buffer between you and the road. The function of the spring is to help absorb bumps on the road so you don't feel them in the car. The job of the shock is to control the spring. The shockwill determine how your springs behave. When you hit a speed bump, for example, the spring compresses. The shock uses its bump valving (i.e. compression valving) to control the motion of the spring compressing. Once the spring is compressed, it has now stored energy and must rebound. The rebound valving on the shock controls the rebound movement on the spring.

With out shocks, your springs would occilate between bump and rebound like a pogo stick.

 

thanks alot for the explantion, 350Zteve.
What's gonna happen if I blow one of the rear shock.?
The car will lose control??

 

No. When you blow a shock you just get a poor handling car that becomes quite bouncy and floaty. Think big pimp daddy Cadillac

 

The purpose of springs in the suspension is *NOT* to set the height of the car or to provide a buffer from the road. Springs have two purposes:
- The primary purpose is to maintain tire contact with the road when the car travels over bumps or is subjected to acceleration loads. Without springs (i.e. rigid suspension) there would be frequent (albeit short) occasions where wheels would leave the ground and lose all grip. The springs create compliance and a range of wheel travel (from droop to bump) where the contact patch is maintained under various vehicle attitudes thereby improving grip.
- The secondary purpose of springs is for ride compliance. The springs and dampers on all street cars are set at much softer settings than would be optimal for best cornering and handling. The reason for this is to give drivers and passengers a comfortable ride. Both the spring and the damper are part of the ride quality equation. There are many ways to omptimize the tradeoff between handling and ride (BMW's highly praised solution is low spring rates combined with high rebound damping).

There are tons of factors involved in the design and specification of a suspension even when you're focusing on a very narrow application such as optimizing lap time around a specific race track. When you are trying to optimize a suspension for a range of potential buyers with various preferences for both street comfort and high performance under demand conditions (e.g., racetrack) the complexity of the choices becomes huge. There is just no way you can make blanket statements like those above.

The only "rules" you can state are that springs exert a reverse force on the wheel that is proportional to the amount that they are deflected (F=kx) and dampers exert a reverse force that is proportional to the rate (velocity) at which the wheel is deflected (F=bv).

The spring allows a specific deflection of the wheel based on a specific external force while the damper dissipates the energy absorbed by the suspension and controls the rate at which the suspension goes into bounce and comes back through rebound. Tweaking the two parameters (and countless other things) allows the suspension engineer to design in the handling and ride tradeoffs that he wants.

 

: so I will get like 20hp to the wheels

Very nice writeup Thanks

 

Good writeup Jason,

In total laymans terms.... The spring controls how high you bounce, and the shock controls how long you bounce.

Think of a shock and spring as a liquid that you throw a bearing through. A more highly damped shock will act like molasses and a lighter damped shock will act like water. The spring basically puts the force behind the "throw" , a stiffer spring is akin to throwing the bearing harder into the liquid.

Quick Fact - Harmonic Ocsillators (springs) are one of the only perfectly understood physics events.

 

Thanks man Excellent summery