Coilover rear shocks.

What's the diameter and wall thickness of the tubing you used?

 

My Maverick had coilovers on it at one time, but shocks are in the place now. This suspension is adjustable up and down (max of 5") with the ladder bar setup, but I don't feel coilovers have any advantage on a leaf spring car. Here are some pictures of the mounting across the top (it's a square tube with brackets for the top of the shocks, and the bottom is attached to wheelie bar setup. You could stagger shocks using this type of mounting, but it would be tight.
This setup is 35 years old and has been used hard on the strip.

 

Is there any advantage with running coilovers on the rear of a leaf spring car. It sounds like all you are doing is stiffening the rear end. That maybe perfect for a drag car but for a road car that just doesn't sound like what you would want for a good ride.

 

Coilovers really don't work with a leaf spring car.................the exception being that mine has the ability to move the rear axle either up or down approximately (has to do with setting up the pinion angle for grip on different strip surfaces) 5".
Really you need either a 4 link or 3 link setup to make it work......IMHO

 

That would be my opinion as well. I was just wondering if I was missing something.

Thanks

 

Putting coil overs on the rear of a leaf car is like running two sets of springs

 

i have been considering trying coil overs with leafs.
heres my thinking. remove the extra leafs and then use a coil over to make up for the spring rate. now you can control and adjust the corner weights.
this would be something that would be good for autocross or road racing. it could help with dragracing also.

 

Reminds me of a Fatman kit. They used a heavier leaf from the axle forward and coil-over for the rear. The leaf portion served as a locating device only.

 

On my 74, I ran those helper shocks, with coils on them for years, back then it wasn't about handling..it was all about rake.

 

I have a set of those laying on my garage floor.

 

Just a thought Bryant,
I think IMCA uses this type of setup, but they have to run some type of rear end locating arm.

If you remove most of the spring and go with coil overs you are going to induce a lot of spring wind-up on acceleration and de-acceleration which will need to be controlled with something..................or some type of torque arm to keep the tires planted on the ground, otherwise I would think you would have a lot of wheel hop...............IMHO

 

i have my version of caltracs bars on my car for the wrap up on acceleration. ive got an idea on how to make them able to work for deceleration or braking also.
my first objective is to get the car back driving on the street. lots of stuff to do just to get that done before i take on any more projects for my car.

 

1.5 steel tubing - .095 wall

 

Sounds like you've got it figured out. Let us know when you get around to it amid all your other projects.................like getting the car on the street again.

 

Here's some of my experience with coilovers and leaf/coil rear suspensions.

If you stagger coilovers (1 front, 1 back) you will have strange things happen on acceleration and deceleration in a street car, works great on a circle track car. You will load the front spring harder on the gas and the rear spring off the gas. That can have an extreme effect on rear steer and traction moving the car around. We used to do this on 3 link dirt cars to get them to turn into the corners under braking and accelerate off the corners on the gas. Loading the side you wanted to get the most bite at the time. We also moved separate shocks front and back to fine tune how fast each corner saw the weight transfer.

We also messed with what is known as a mono/coil rear suspension. The mono leaf (take all your other leafs out except the main leaf) is the location of the roll center height and also the lateral locator. The leafs take the place of a panhard bar or watts link to locate the rear left to right under the car. The coilovers then provide the actual spring rate the car sees. The mono will only contribute around 25# of spring rate and is really not a major factor. You can then tune corner loading with your coilovers. You can also set ride heights with them. The drawback is the mono will not control wrap under acceleration or braking. We added a pull bar on top of the rearend housing that connected to the chassis in front of the rearend to control wrap and provide additional weight transfer. There really isn't room under a Maverick to put a pull bar very easily. Another option is a lift arm. It attaches to the rearend and goes forward attaching to the chassis near the back of the transmission. We ran springs for compression and rebound control (commonly called a 5th and 6th coil) and a shock to control the rate it applied the forces. Again, it can be a packaging issue. Also, the mono leaf springs don't last very long, we changed them every 4 to 5 nights on our cars.

Another option to control wrap of the rearend with this setup is by using a Reese trailer sway control bar. We attached one end to the bottom of the rearend housing with a bracket and the smaller end to a box welded to the frame alongside the driveshaft. It worked very well, applied forces smoothly but if (when) you break the Reese bar, your rearend tries to rotate out from under the car. Bad deal.

With all of these traction devices, we also ran a shock horizontally above the rearend to control the rate the suspension loaded and unloaded the rear tires. You can also make it load one tire harder than the other to help turning into a corner or accelerating out of the corner.

Again, all used on dirt track circle track racing. These cars are very sophisticated in the rear suspension with floating mounts, multiple springs and shocks with multiple choices of mounting locations for each.

LR corner of a dirt modified. Notice the shock running to the upper left at the very top of the picture, it's a 90/10 laying at a 10* angle uphill towards the front at ride height. Also notice the blue spring lying on it's side just below the top shock, that controls axle wrap and is a spring loaded pull bar. The LR spring is behind the axle on a slider and not a shock. In this picture there is a shock missing that runs up and down on the front side of the axle housing. A few points of adjustment, huh?


RR corner of the same dirt modified. Notice you can again see the black shock lying down going forward from the top of the axle housing. Again notice the pull bar and that the spring is on a coilover in front of the axle.


LR corner of a dirt late model. In this case, the coilover is behind the axle on the LR with another shock in front of the axle. They have very different valving rates to control how quick the car rises under acceleration and drops under deceleration.


Side view of a dirt late model. Notice there is no pull bar on this car. It uses a "ladder bar" of sorts. It bolts to the rearend with heim ends and goes toward the front of the car. At the front end is a spring (the 6th coil) mounted in a chain that controls deceleration axle wrap and the coilover behind (the 5th coil) it controls acceleration axle wrap. This is a lift arm suspension. On the rearend of this late model there were 2 different shock on the LR corner, 1 shock on the RR corner, 1 shock on the lift arm and 2 shocks on top of the rearend housing lying flat. There were 2 springs on the lift arm, 1 spring behind the axle on the LR and 1 spring in front of the axle on the RR.


I'm sorry but I don't have any pictures of mono/coil setups. They basically mount the rearend like normal and then use coilovers like these rear suspensions do.

SPark