Spring news....

[jed the spread]

Just spotted this on The Samber, looks interesting especially if you follow the link to all the other springs (Though it is in German). Its worth it just to admire his spring compressors

The Seikel springs are very strong, good for a heavy camper on a bumpy road. Unfortunately up to now there isn't anything comparable. My springs settled down a lot over the years. On my journey to Central Asia I broke one spring



I think this happened because in the rear the coils in the middle always lay on top of each other. Therefore I don't plan to buy a new one. I am waiting for the Trailmaster springs. They said that they plan to make a series specially for heavy campers, but this is delayed for a while.

Andreas Lidl, a member of IG16, has therefore designed his own spring, may be this is the right one:

http://www.ig-syncro16.de/forum/index.p ... ic&t=14543

[Rogue Trooper]

Wow that a cool bit of kit!

[syncropaddy]

Andreas Lidl, a member of IG16, has therefore designed his own spring, may be this is the right one

I wonder if it will ever be on the Thursday specials ......

So the moral of this story is if you want it done right, do it yourself!

[..lee..]

i guess this drags the old argument up again as to whether they are suitable for a heavy camper. i dont think the centre coils touching constantly is right

[syncropaddy]

Well the guy says in his opening post that the Seikel spring was designed originally for a lightweight Rally Doka! Why then, are people putting them on heavy campers?

[Simon Baxter]

My spring compressors are like that, just you have to use an air gun on it.
Never use them.
This is the problem with not using miniblock springs.



You want a spring to be progressive, the more you load it the firmer you want it to be.
The way to make a spring firmer is to either make the spring shorter, or the wire it's made from thicker.
The original miniblock springs do that.
if you look at them from the top they are a spiral, as the load on them increases the end coils start to be taken out of the equasion.
The wire that they are made from is tapered, so that with a miniblock spring you get the best of both worlds, a shorter, fatter spring.
Miniblocks are perfect for the vans as you can get the features of a longer spring in a shorter space, but they are more expensive compared to normal springs made from parallel wire.

Now, cheaper springs that are made from normal wire are not progressive, but there is a "cheat" to make them progressive and thats to have the coils spaced unevenly so that some coils are closer together, and some are further apart.
The idea is that as load increases then the coils are designed to touch and become coilbound as that then in effect makes the spring shorter and the spring rate will rise.
Obviously parallel wire springs are much cheaper and if they are made to be progressive in the manner above then you do get some noise from them.

[Simon Baxter]

Also, interesting to see where those Eibach springs have broken, not in the closed coils but in the middle of the un bound ones, those are the coils doing all the work.

[..lee..]

i suspect the upper and lower part of the coil was never designed to take all of the travel which on a heavy van they would be. as intended the centre coils would be working and taking the minor hit then the outer part of the spring would only take the big hits. this was posted about a while ago and the fact they were designed for lighter weight raid vans. i wouldn`t be happy if the coils were sitting on each other sort of defeats the object really.

[v-lux]

Mein Auto hat aber ein Alltagsgewicht von 2,5 Tonnen, bei Fernreisen werden auch schnell mal etwas über 3 Tonnen erreicht.

A little over 3 tonne.......well....that might have something to do with it perhaps? That's just about 500kg over the limit isn't it?

[jebiga41]

Mein Auto hat aber ein Alltagsgewicht von 2,5 Tonnen, bei Fernreisen werden auch schnell mal etwas über 3 Tonnen erreicht.

A little over 3 tonne.......well....that might have something to do with it perhaps? That's just about 500kg over the limit isn't it?

There's a lot of campers which would be close to that and as some of the lads have loaded their dokas and sikas with loads comparable to that so I wouldn't say it's that exceptionalwhen one factors water, fuel, spares tools, leisure batteries, etc

[taigagreen]

Mein Auto hat aber ein Alltagsgewicht von 2,5 Tonnen, bei Fernreisen werden auch schnell mal etwas über 3 Tonnen erreicht.

A little over 3 tonne.......well....that might have something to do with it perhaps? That's just about 500kg over the limit isn't it?

Also, the roads to Mongolia from Germany might have affected the outcome.

[jebiga41]

Just translated this via google translate http://translate.google.ie/?ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tab=wT# what do people reckon on this? looks like the trailmaster heavy duty are not going to be here anytime soon.

This is the problem with not using miniblock springs.

were the original vw springs miniblock, or are these specialist Simon ?

[jebiga41]

More discussion on the samba http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewto ... eb8244aee6

[Simon Baxter]

Originals are Miniblocks.

[jebiga41]

Originals are Miniblocks.

Take it the suplex are the same then simon?