Are there any benifits to going with stiffer shocks when drag racing? I know its better for road racing but what about Drag. Same question for lowering/ stiffer springs.

 

As a former drag record holdwr(stock class)... If you have any wheel spin, the idea is to gat all the weight on the rear tires foe a good "Launch".. start with 50/50m shocks on rear, 90/10's up front . disconnect and/or/ remove your sway bar in front. This will allow the front end weight to transfer to rear tires. The shocks give 90% resistance to compression and only 10% to extension. The 50/50 on rear will allow some weight transfer, but not too much or you will lose traction in transision stage after you come out of the hole. Remove everything that weighs anything and in not required to run vech... Put your diesel battery (125lbs) in trunk.... remove a/c etc.. good luck. Carter

 

This is kind of a false notion -- for the track you want the springs "soft" to reduce dynamic wieght transfer. However, "soft" is usually still much stiffer than the stock springs when all is said and done. You need springs that are stiff enough to not bottom out (at which point you get a huge stiffness increase and lose traction). You also want to keep the suspension travel in a "good" range as the geometry goes bad at extreme travel on many cars. Lowering the car reduces steady-state weight transfer so it is a common mod to improve performance, but it also means that you need to run stiffer springs to keep from bottoming out. Stiff springs make the car more responsive in the transitions, so that is another competing factor. The car gets more difficult to drive with really stiff springs. Suspension tuning is complicated, and involves many competing factors. Don't think that stiffer is always better -- that is a false notion.

I am sure that drag racing suspension tuning is similarly complicated, so no such "stiffer is better" rule of thumb exists. In general, I don't think doubling the spring rates would improve drag racing performance, if that is the kind of change you are considering.

-Max

 

I have already settled on Stiffer lower springs. My main question was about the shock setup. Im trying to see what the best setup would be for me. Stock shocks, maybe R1 shocks, maybe some adjustables.