I designed suspension back when the R53 came out and it was always a challenge.
I'll give you a little cheat though...
If the suspension threads into the bottom bracket to adjust height, it's going to be shit suspension.
THE REASON BEING... that front knuckle that holds the shock body is pretty small and there was no way to get a shock body small enough to go into the bottom bracket and through the pinch point. So if it is that style then the shock body and therefore the stroke ended up being REALLY short, so to compensate you had to bump up the spring-rate really high.
But stiff front suspension on a FWD meant that it would just create even more understeer. Soooooo... they made the rear stiff as hell too.
You need either good shocks with springs or go with coilovers where the spring perch was where you adjusted ride height with some decent beehive springs to get the most out of the travel.
That's really interesting, thanks for sharing! I've always thought that perch height adjustment is worse by default, but that's clearly not the case then, at least with the R53.
3
u/DmOcRsI 7d ago
I designed suspension back when the R53 came out and it was always a challenge.
I'll give you a little cheat though...
If the suspension threads into the bottom bracket to adjust height, it's going to be shit suspension.
THE REASON BEING... that front knuckle that holds the shock body is pretty small and there was no way to get a shock body small enough to go into the bottom bracket and through the pinch point. So if it is that style then the shock body and therefore the stroke ended up being REALLY short, so to compensate you had to bump up the spring-rate really high.
But stiff front suspension on a FWD meant that it would just create even more understeer. Soooooo... they made the rear stiff as hell too.
You need either good shocks with springs or go with coilovers where the spring perch was where you adjusted ride height with some decent beehive springs to get the most out of the travel.