> Hello all...
> I've been trying to figure out how to set the packers, and while the
> description in the manual makes sense to me, it doesn't seem to match
> the behavior I've observed. Maybe one of you experts could give a
> short summary on their effect?
> I understood that they limit the travel on the suspension by the set
> amount. So if ride heigth is, say, 40mm and packers 20mm, the
> suspension would only be able to travel 20mm and then stop at the
> bumps. So the lowest the car could get is 40-20=20mm. This is
> clearly not the way it works though, since at a setting like this the
> plank can still rub, and checking the ride height graph shows it was
> indeed going way below that. Even more confusing is being able to set
> the packers at a higher value than ride height! Clearly, I'm
> visualizing the packers as something other than they are, but I
> haven't been able to find any logical pattern to their effect (would
> be nice for the manual to have diagrams showing what these are!).
> Thanks for any possible enlightenment!
Ride height is the height of the vehicle above the ground when
stationary. At this point there will be some element of load on the
spring (not that much), giving the potential for movement of the car
vertically, in both directions (up and down). Our particular interest is
in the down direction.
If we consider the car moving at speed, there will be additional load on
the springs from the downforce, causing them to compress and generally
lowering the ride height. Softer springs will compress to a greater
degree for a given load and hence a soft car with a low initial ride
height will start scraping the plank before a stiffer car would.
There comes a point when the there is no more movement available in the
suspension, either the spings are fully compressed (unlikley) or some
other method has been employed to limit the travel, in F1 cars there
still has to be some give, so the additional load goes onto the bump
***s. The ammount of compression on the spring can be further limited
by the introducion of packers. Packers effectivly transfer load onto the
bump ***s, rather than having any elastic properties themselves.
Ok, weak visualisation: Imagine you have a spring infront of you,
standing upright, and fixed to the desk. You can put your hand on it and
press down, compressing the spring, let go and the spring, well it
springs (that's the technical terminology btw). You don't like to fully
compress the spring so you break up a pencil and put a length inside the
spring. Now you hurt your hand on the pencil before the spring is fully
compressed. Your not keen on that so you use a bit of sculpted
***/eraser/whatsit under the pencil. You still hurt your hand, though
not so bad. Finally you decide that perhaps you should visualise a nice
cup of tea instead.
Ahem, so spring=spring, pencil=packer, and conviniently enough
***=***/eraser/whasit. Great! Err, maybe.
If your plank is getting worn, there are several things you can try,
Lower the wing, stiffen the Springs, put in the packers or raise the
static ride height. Any one or combination of these may solve the
probem, and quite possibly introduce new ones.
Lucky for us, we can examine the ride heigh and suspension travel at any
and all points of a track. Use the Graphs Luke. To get an idea of when
the bump ***s will come into play you need to look at suspension travel
and ride height. Usually you can see what you would need to hit the bump
***s by looking at the remanding travel on the fastest part of the
course, or in detail anytime the ride height goes below 10mm. Put in
packers, and do another lap, look at the graph and lo and behold, the
available travel will be reduced.
--
Suck The Goat
