Ain't dat da truth.
The car we might end up with could be quite light. This will have some effect on the suspension I'm guessing. Track cars have heavy spring rates but I would have thought the lighter the car is, the less necessary it is to do super heavy springs? We will have to update the struts etc to late offset, but that's fine. We would look at pulling out the T bars too. From the sounds of it the top mounting points aren't the weak point. What about the bottom?

 

the lighter the vehicle the less spring you will want/need. that puts less stress on everything. as duke says i cant see a need to reinforce the shock mount areas. they are strong enough for the pound spring you will be using. it also means you will not need massive brakes. less weight is the perfect advantage.

 

But we've already got the 430mm rotors lol
Seriously, why then do the racecars that are much lighter still have high rate springs?

 

maybe i should rephrase that. you can use high spring rates on a lighter car. being a race car ride quality is not important. there will be less need to make the shock mounts stronger because there will be less load on them because the weight of the car is less.
the radical weighs 495 dry, uses 300pound springs.

 

Yeah I get the logic. Just wondering why you see some 951 racecars with 800-900lb springs on them?

 

OK, I’ll go over it one more time….
The stock shock mounts are strong enough to deal with removal of the torsion bars. Even with the torsion bars installed the shock mounts absorb almost all of the impulse of any impact. The springs ‘hold the car up’ and the shocks absorb impacts and damp the oscillations of the springs. Hit a curb at the track – 95% of the impact goes to the shocks – same thing for a pot hole. The impact of those type of forces is way more than the stress of just holding up the car.
So – have no fear, pull the torsion bars out.
My street car / old track mule has 20k very hard miles and 5 years on it since removal of the torsion bars.

 

Sometimes its just an ego problem!
But mostly it matters how smooth your track is. If I were to run on a super smooth track I would have ridiculously stiff springs. But in the real world we have to deal with rougher tracks.

 

Thanks Chris. Good to know. Perhaps it's one of those cases of it becoming an urban myth re the T bar removal.
What are your thoughts on spring rates the lighter the car?

 

Its all about ratios - take 10% off the vehicle weight then you need to do the same for the spring rate to keep the same response.

BTW - the 'hot' set up for stock class cars over here is 700lb front and 500-600 rear. Works wonders for turn in and cures understeer on the under tired stock set up.

 

So what would the avearage 'stocker' weigh?

 

A tad over 3000lbs (without driver).

 

the vulue of a tidy stock ish 944t in aus will eventually bounce back .
there is a nice gulf blue caged 944 na with fibrglass front onebay at the moment . some of them have good coil overs as well its at 9k now if you coyld sell the motor into the race serous this car could be as cheap as 6k .

other wise put the word out to swap the black car for a caged 944 .