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Dear All, Having recently gotten around to putting my car back on her wheels (more on this in my project thread, soon), I have noticed a potential problem with my front suspension. I seem to have differing spring rates on either side of the vehicle. Just some background. The vehicle is partially stripped, so currently consists of suspension and glass only; no engine or anything too heavy. It has been fitted with a brand new pair of Sachs shock absorbers purchased from Euro Car Parts. I stripped the struts and painted up everything, before re-assembling it all, and re-fitting it to the car. Having now dropped the vehicle back onto it's wheels, I decided to test the shock absorber response by pushing down sharply on the front corners. There is a dramatic difference between the responses of the two sides. The passenger side shock gives what I believe to be a fairly normal response, depressing and returning to position in a damped fashion. The drivers side however is very much stiffer. I can barely depress it with my bodyweight, and it returns much more swiftly. Now I realise that the engine is heavier on the drivers side, so the shock could be differentially pressured to compensate, but the difference is more than I would have expected. Therefore, do I have a problem here, or is it simply because I am testing the response with the engine out and the car incorrectly weighted? I have checked the struts, and can't see any assembly error on my part (although I certainly wouldn't rule it out!) I have checked that the spring support plates are correctly positioned, so the springs aren't loaded differently. Obviously I don't want to go stripping down the struts and sending the shocks back to euro car parts unless I really have to, as this is a massive job! Any advice is greatly appreciated. Kind regards, Mike

Hi there, Did a sprint day with my mate russ, who has a lovely avon tiger with a 2.0L zetec R engine on bodies! tis very nice. But he's struggling with tragic understeer, mid corner, and exit. The initial turn in is good, then as soon as you try and drive through the corner, it ploughs on. Now it's got Gaz coilovers and we think 300lbs springs at the front, we think perhaps a bit less at the rear. This spring rate sounds way to high for a 500kg car with a reasonably light car. We wound the dampers right off, and it made no difference. Considering the gaz kit for the 205 has 250lbs springs, which i consider way too stiff, from my understeer experiences!!! Any thoughts from the suspension experts, i'm thinking he needs more like 150lbs at the front...does anyone own a kit car that they autotest or sprint? or anyone else shed any light. Cheers J