Lotus Europa Forums > The Paddock

Spring Rates

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EuropaTC:
Well, after more than 8 months of head scratching, I've decided to take a punt on this modification and ordered some adjustable dampers and higher rate springs.  They came this week and look far too nice to put on a car and get them dirty  ::)

For anyone interested in the rates, I've decided on suspension frequencies of around 1.8 which on my car/geometry translates to spring rates of 250lbs/ins & 140lbs/ins.  It's slightly higher at the front due to the roll bar contribution and of course they aren't exactly the same rates front & rear but I think it's good enough for a starting point.  I've read so much about differing theories of having higher rates at the front or balancing rates Fr/R that I've decided the only way to find out what suits me is to experiment myself.

Yesterday I installed the new kit and have yet to decide on ride heights, at the moment everything is on the lowest settings and might be too low for a road car.  I will have to drive it and settle everything down I think, but at the moment it looks "cool" to the little boy in me  ;)

Finally, a question for anyone else who has lowered their car and that is "have you found problems with bump steer and if so, what have you done ?" 

The second image shows the front of the car and the steering rod is at a noticeable angle to the rack, so I'm wondering if it will cause problems. I'd be interested if anyone else has encountered similar things.

Brian

4129R:
I have fitted the same shox.

Be careful not to hit anything with the anti-roll bar. I hit the garage concrete floor when driving in off the gravel, and smashed the A/R bar mounting pin in the bottom of the shox. I had to re-tap the hole in the ally, and re-fit the pin deeper into the shox. The pin is just a screw fit into the ally, with the hole drilled right through into the bigger hole where the rubber bush is situated.

Serge:
They look nice! Did you buy them from ProTech or from SJ Sportscars? I've read that there were some issues with the bush sizes when they first sold them, and they weren't very helpful (but fortunately ProTech is).

What are the open and closed lengths of those shocks? And what size tyres are you using? Can you put up some photos of the wheel gap?

Hitting the ARB studs are a real problem, a fellow Europa owner here in belgium has had to re-weld his studs on his AVO's at least three times. I've decided that I don't want the studs to be part of the shock and I'll build a stud separately from the shocks. If I'm spending quite a lot of money on shocks, I don't want to ruin them by hitting the stud on our horrible Belgian roads.

Kind regards,

Serge

EuropaTC:
Thanks for the tip, it's good to know that should the worst happen it's still fixable.  There's a slight ramp into my workshop which I do occasionally catch with the Elan's exhaust but the Europa was ok yesterday on it's maiden voyage up and down the drive  :) 

Are yours the ones from SJS Lotus with their front springs,  and if so where about have you got your ride height set ? On the lowest setting it looks just a bit too low/boy racerish at the moment.  But of course that might all change when I look at it again today.....

Brian 

EuropaTC:
Hi folks,

They're SJS Lotus ones. I didn't notice any problems with the bushes at either end when fitting them, in fact on the original dampers I had washers centralising the top front mount which I didn't need to use with these. Everything else just slotted in place. I'll keep an eye on the rubber in the bushes though, the last ones I had seemed to collapse very early in life and I replaced them with bushes used in the front wishbones.

Serge, I didn't actually measure the damper dimensions just the springs in case I decide on another rate, but I did lay the rear old/new assemblies together and they looked about the same.  I will be playing with the set-up over the next few days so I'll take some more measurements and any part numbers that's on them. Presumably there will be full dimensions on the Protech website ?

My tyres are 195/50 x15 & 205/50 x15, very similar to the diameter of the previous 13" tyres. I only took photos of the assembly yesterday so I'll drive it round the block and get a few more today.

Brian

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