utkinpol

very good material as it is, if you find it adequate for the purpose you could add a couple of paragraphs about valving without getting too much into tuning, just a short excerpt based on pages 7,9,11,12 of penske tuning guide would do.
i can see it is a tough job to find an acceptable middle ground of what level of detail to provide in such overview as it really depends of an intended target audience. from what i think - people do not really understand usually how all those components inside of the shock work together with springs and what are the dependencies there, so, perhaps a couple of sentences describing whole system would help.

ps. i mean 'compression is set very stiff' is obvious for those who spent some time understanding it but if it is a high level article it may easily confuse.

Land Jet

Larry, one thing I don't understand and I'm hoping you will chime in. When a car has understeer, then you usually hear "soften the front bar" or "soften the shocks". Or if there is oversteer, you usually hear "soften that end of the car". So my question is, why are stiffer springs used to improve traction if softening the other adjustments works to improve traction? It seems like a contradiction.

SundayDriver

I think you are dealing with a misconception - stiffer springs do not improve traction. They keep the car flatter in corners - psychologically this makes the driver more comfortable and it keeps the suspension operating in a narrow range - especially important when a car is lowered and the suspension geometry has been compromised due to the lowering.

In an aero car, VERY stiff springs are an advantage as it maintains the ride height - critical to making downforce.