Front suspension grooves

[250GT]

Hello all,
The front wheelsprings of older cars before 1958 does have three-3- possible groves to use.
Are they only to lift the front body height/level ?
For the use of bigger wheels or to adopt the differance of a alubody verses steelbody in weight?
or has this also the effect of a stiffer road behaviour? : spring more pressed together.
Thanks for any comment.

Cornelis.

[tyang]

Hi Cornelis,

According to Monsieur, Francois says it was to simply give adjustment to ride height. I guess early cars could vary in ride height depending on engine and body configurations, and this gave the car some kind of adjustability.

Tom

[Timo]

Although, not having personally seen these, but based on described location, pictures and verified by Mr. Sicards assessment, I find it quite interesting that, if in fact and which I don't doubt, the grooves intended for ride height adjustments were provided on earlier cars, since for a while now I've been working on research and development of some solution for front suspension ride height adjustments on Daytonas using O.E.M. Koni/Spring-components and which originally do not provide such adjustments and yet, at least to me, appear to have a miscalculation/-interpretation or something when comparing some factory given specifications and my personal and still on-going "real-world" data collection from cars owned by clients and friends. I've heard of many owners complaining of front tires rubbing on to top-side of inner fender-wells during driving/cornering etc., even after having shocks rebuilt and/or springs replaced with "new" and have myself seen a number of Daytonas with this issue.

[250GT]

Although, not having personally seen these, but based on described location, pictures and verified by Mr. Picards assessment, I find it quite interesting that, if in fact and which I don't doubt, the grooves intended for ride height adjustments were provided on earlier cars, since for a while now I've been working on research and development of some solution for front suspension ride height adjustments on Daytonas using O.E.M. Koni/Spring-components and which originally do not provide such adjustments and yet, at least to me, appear to have a miscalculation/-interpretation or something when comparing some factory given specifications and my personal and still on-going "real-world" data collection from cars owned by clients and friends. I've heard of many owners complaining of front tires rubbing on to top-side of inner fender-wells during driving/cornering etc., even after having shocks rebuilt and/or springs replaced with "new" and have myself seen a number of Daytonas with this issue.

Hi Timo,
Did you think of enlarging the diameter of the front antiroll bar( Sway-bar) ?
the change in handling for a 250GT from 18 to 20 mm is huge.
I think Daytona goes up to 26mm diameter. but not sure
I did go up to the" second groove" to test the possibility to use 6.50x16 instead of 6.00x16 without touching the innerwings.
ciao

its only a hobby here
C.

[Timo]

Hi Timo,
Did you think of enlarging the diameter of the front antiroll bar( Sway-bar) ?
the change in handling for a 250GT from 18 to 20 mm is huge.
I think Daytona goes up to 26mm diameter. but not sure
I did go up to the" second groove" to test the possibility to use 6.50x16 instead of 6.00x16 without touching the innerwings.
ciao

its only a hobby here
C.

Hi C.
Just had a lengthy conversation about all this yesterday with a client. I do agree that stronger (Comp.Daytona) anti-sway bar will help handling and better protect against "body-roll", but it still won't change the ride height statistics, which among other things, as I understand, are bases for calculating suspension geometry settings. I have one client Daytona with Comp. anti-sway bar, but everything else being equal (to my research), it's tires are still rubbing.

Passion, Hobby and Business here,
T.

[250GT]

Well three option here,
Nothing new for you Timo.
TY'ers love solving problems.

1. Making stronger susp. springs (+++)
2. machining extra groove (+) but lot of work
3 using low profile tyres (---)

Cornelis

[250GT]

Timo, I would simply put a spacer on top.
The easy way.

C.

[Timo]

Timo, I would simply put a spacer on top.
The easy way.

C.

C.,
Exactly what I've had in mind for a long time, but my problem is a little more comprehensive. I started this R & D with mindset that I could create and fabricate spacers or shims that would, not only achieve appropriate adjust-ability that is safe and wouldn't look out-of-place, but also, if needed, easily adaptable to many Daytonas, based on mathematics of existing spec's from a given car.
You see, it would be easy and simple to fix ride height on one car, but I'm also trying to create system that would help others and same time hoping that once I'm done with this project, I could make couple of $'s for my time and trouble or, at least, break even. But that might be too much to ask and therefor I just work on this whenever I don't have anything important to do, like getting these cars in my shop done.

Passion, Hobby and also trying to make a living with it here

[Michael Bayer]

Timo A gentleman in this area who happened to own a Ferrari dealership aggressively raced a SWB for a number of years and used aluminum spacers to adjust that cars ride height and suspension characteristics I suspect he has a lot of data from those years M

[Timo]

Michael,
thanks for your suggestion, but as I understand, component details and their location geometry in SWB is quite different from Daytonas, which currently is the only focus of my on-going research, and therefor I suspect that the mathematics/data from SWB probably wouldn't be much of help for me.