Re: Advice...... Spring/suspension/lifting options.
Posted: 19 Aug 2012, 19:55
Jed.
The original rear springs are what is called a mini block.
It has small pigtails for a reason, the same reason that the others you mentioned "bind".
On a empty, unladen vehicle you want a softer spring, you don't want stiff springs as you'll end up at the chiropractor every week.
On a heavy, laden vehicle you need a stiffer spring to handle the weight and not sit on the bumpstops.
What you need is a compact "progressive" spring that will cover all bases and check all boxes, soft when it's unladen, stiff when laden.
The way to make a spring stiffer is either to make the material it is made from fatter or make it shorter.
So, with a mini block, the ones with the so called "weak pigtails" are quite clever in how they work as they are made from a tapered wire, fat in the middle, skinny at the ends and are designed to collapse into themselves. If you look at one from the end you will notice it is like a spiral.
When you add load the end point of the spring will change and the spring will become both shorter, and because of them being made from tapered wire they become fatter too, double whammy.
A normal parallel spring, same as Seikel and the Andreas Lidl ones etc can also be made to be progressive by winding the coil such that some are closer together, so as weight is added the coils become coil bound and again make the spring shorter so again making it stiffer. The problem with this is that you end up making it from a larger diameter wire so you loose the soft damping, and you can get noise as the coils clang together.
2 ways of achieving the same effect, the former the clever way to do it, but costs more, the latter a bit crude but works.
Now as usual there's a little more to it, and again as usual it's a case of horses for corses, the standard springs will suit most people if they are using them within the realms of what vw intended, but if your carrying more weight then the original springs probably aren't up to it, but again if your operating out of the parameters vw set then they probably will break as they weren't designed to do what your doing with them.
The original rear springs are what is called a mini block.
It has small pigtails for a reason, the same reason that the others you mentioned "bind".
On a empty, unladen vehicle you want a softer spring, you don't want stiff springs as you'll end up at the chiropractor every week.
On a heavy, laden vehicle you need a stiffer spring to handle the weight and not sit on the bumpstops.
What you need is a compact "progressive" spring that will cover all bases and check all boxes, soft when it's unladen, stiff when laden.
The way to make a spring stiffer is either to make the material it is made from fatter or make it shorter.
So, with a mini block, the ones with the so called "weak pigtails" are quite clever in how they work as they are made from a tapered wire, fat in the middle, skinny at the ends and are designed to collapse into themselves. If you look at one from the end you will notice it is like a spiral.
When you add load the end point of the spring will change and the spring will become both shorter, and because of them being made from tapered wire they become fatter too, double whammy.
A normal parallel spring, same as Seikel and the Andreas Lidl ones etc can also be made to be progressive by winding the coil such that some are closer together, so as weight is added the coils become coil bound and again make the spring shorter so again making it stiffer. The problem with this is that you end up making it from a larger diameter wire so you loose the soft damping, and you can get noise as the coils clang together.
2 ways of achieving the same effect, the former the clever way to do it, but costs more, the latter a bit crude but works.
Now as usual there's a little more to it, and again as usual it's a case of horses for corses, the standard springs will suit most people if they are using them within the realms of what vw intended, but if your carrying more weight then the original springs probably aren't up to it, but again if your operating out of the parameters vw set then they probably will break as they weren't designed to do what your doing with them.
