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It all depends on what you're trying to get the car to do.
You see, this is something I've always tried to explain to people - the car is only as fast as you drive it. If the car does not respond in a way suited to your driving style, then set the car up around your style.
Don't just run out and buy parts because "they're better", choose the parts that will get the car to behave the way you want it to behave.
Think about what the springs and the shocks/struts do on a car. The springs allow for suspension movement, while the struts/shocks control the springs' motion. Stiffer struts/shocks (hereafter referred to as dampers) allow the springs to move less. This results in a car that turns in sharper, but has less lateral grip (in a production style chassis, a certain amount of roll is used to add lateral grip, case in point - F1 suspensions circa 1965).
Ergo, stiffer dampers mean a car that changes directions quickly, but snaps loose easily. Also, stiff front dampers tend to lead towards understeer as the front breaks away. The understeer is found typically at the corner exit after the tail has found its path.
Stiffer and shorter springs, however, take away available movement all-together. With stiffer dampers, all of the travel of the suspension is still present, it just takes more weight transfer i.e. force to compress the suspension. Also worth noting is that the inherent droop of the suspension remains in a stiff damper setup, giving the car a tendency to "roll off" the inside front and shift weight to the outside front easily, but without equal roll on the inside and outside, the outside front breaks loose instead of maintaining grip.
The loss, however, with springs, is that lowered or stiffer springs tend to change the suspensions geometry. Camber gain, caster gain, and toe are all altered as the car's natural rest settings change with the new springs. Not to mention, with a lowered suspension, problems like bumpsteer, steering arm angles, and track width start showing up. The gain, though, is equal loss of travel upwards and down thus nixing the "roll off" problem.
A suspension's behavior, whether you realize it or not, all is determined by how long the control arms are, how tall the spindles are, and where they are mounted in the frame relative to the frame-rails themselves. This is the key idea of "suspension geometry". By changing one factor, you radically alter the entire makeup of the suspension. This is why suspension tuning must be approached with careful thought and with an educated and personalized ideal. It's very VERY easy to make a mistake, and I've found out for myself that undoing a mistake is oftentimes harder than getting it right to start with.
You see, this is something I've always tried to explain to people - the car is only as fast as you drive it. If the car does not respond in a way suited to your driving style, then set the car up around your style.
Don't just run out and buy parts because "they're better", choose the parts that will get the car to behave the way you want it to behave.
Think about what the springs and the shocks/struts do on a car. The springs allow for suspension movement, while the struts/shocks control the springs' motion. Stiffer struts/shocks (hereafter referred to as dampers) allow the springs to move less. This results in a car that turns in sharper, but has less lateral grip (in a production style chassis, a certain amount of roll is used to add lateral grip, case in point - F1 suspensions circa 1965).
Ergo, stiffer dampers mean a car that changes directions quickly, but snaps loose easily. Also, stiff front dampers tend to lead towards understeer as the front breaks away. The understeer is found typically at the corner exit after the tail has found its path.
Stiffer and shorter springs, however, take away available movement all-together. With stiffer dampers, all of the travel of the suspension is still present, it just takes more weight transfer i.e. force to compress the suspension. Also worth noting is that the inherent droop of the suspension remains in a stiff damper setup, giving the car a tendency to "roll off" the inside front and shift weight to the outside front easily, but without equal roll on the inside and outside, the outside front breaks loose instead of maintaining grip.
The loss, however, with springs, is that lowered or stiffer springs tend to change the suspensions geometry. Camber gain, caster gain, and toe are all altered as the car's natural rest settings change with the new springs. Not to mention, with a lowered suspension, problems like bumpsteer, steering arm angles, and track width start showing up. The gain, though, is equal loss of travel upwards and down thus nixing the "roll off" problem.
A suspension's behavior, whether you realize it or not, all is determined by how long the control arms are, how tall the spindles are, and where they are mounted in the frame relative to the frame-rails themselves. This is the key idea of "suspension geometry". By changing one factor, you radically alter the entire makeup of the suspension. This is why suspension tuning must be approached with careful thought and with an educated and personalized ideal. It's very VERY easy to make a mistake, and I've found out for myself that undoing a mistake is oftentimes harder than getting it right to start with.
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