Ride height

[BrettJ]

I'm about to lower my car onto the ground for the first time and would like to set the ride height. Can anyone let me know what length of the coil between the collars should be on each unloaded Bilstein shock? I'm looking to do this as a starting point and I know this will have to setup correctly afterwards.

[SM25T]

You want to be sure you have adequate ground clearance under sump, bellhousing, chassis or floor ... with your weight in the car

[Graham Hutton]

I had this very same issue when building my 310R as the build manual gives no advice at all. I contacted Lee at Caterham and he said that 161mm Front and 330mm rear would give a decent starting point and he was right. These are the dimensions between the faces of the spring platforms.

I did a flat floor setup afterwards and in the process dropped the front a little bit to get a bit of rake in the car, improve the weight distribution and do the corner weights etc. I didn't need to alter anything drastically though.

Might be worth pointing out that mine is an SV chassis with 15" wheels. The rear strut length means the wheels really fill the arches which is good as some of the cars with 13" wheels can look odd if the rear ride height is too high.

Anyhow, enough rambling, but 161/330 was definitely a good starting point.

[Graham Hutton]

Oh also worth mentioning that at the end of it all I have about 90mm clearance under the sump which seems about OK. I've not grounded out on anything yet but the car looks fairly poised.

[StevehS3]

Thank you for this info Graham. I am about to do a basic setup on mine so that's a good starting point. 

[BrettJ]

Thank you Graham, this was the exact info I was looking for

[eric]

my 1600K is 150 mm front ( chassis to ground at the back of the cycle wing ))  and rear  165 mm ( chassis to ground at the front of the rear wing ) . The rear must be 10 or 15 mm higher than the front 

[rayjackson1950]

Their should be something in the manual, I would have thought. I have a 1997 Crossflow, which has itRide height.pdf .

Tried to upload but failed. If you want the onfo, messag me with your email and I will send to you. It is different for Live Axle and De-dion

[Jonathan Kay]

Image shows OK for me.

Jonathan

[BrettJ]

So I have tried to adjust my dampers to the length mentioned above only to realise that those measurement are for the "Road" dampers, as I have the "Track" dampers, does anyone have the measurement for these?

 

[BenF]

Hi Brett, I would think it's best just to put the car on the ground and do things based on the sump clearance / ride height as mentioned above.

Also, I remember a rule of thumb which was that it should be possible to roll a wine bottle under the sump and that was a good ground clearance.  This works out at 75mm, but the advice was given by someone who was quite aggressive with running the car low, so 90mm sounds good.

[StevehS3]

I did 20,000 road miles in my last 7 (K series with standard road springs) with approx 85mm under the sump with me in the seat and I don't remember ever scraping it. I'm aiming for 90mm in my Sigma car.

[ChrisC]

Remember putting my 420R with stock suspension on the ground for the first time, it was a very low, but looked fantastic.  I used the ride height settings from the old build manuals, which covered the 420R, for the drive to IVA, and the running in.  The intention was to get a flatfloor at 1000 miles, but other things have taken focus so it's still on my todo list.