squarehead

iTrader: (75)

Does anyone know of a device that will check the spring weights of schock springs? I have a few various collections of springs for small Delta shocks, and aside from the wire diameter (which alone doesn't give real accurate performance ratings), there is no way to tell what spring will be firmer or stiffer than the next.


Any ideas if this measuring tool exists?



Thanks guys,


doug

raving-monkey

i think integy, 3racing or someone like that does a spring guage thing...its about 70 dollars iirc and does normal springs and motor springs but don't quote me on that.

Ted Flack

I used my drill press and a scale with a dial indicator on the top of the drill press (the part that moves).

I moved each spring .100in while sitting on the scale and measured the load increase. I did two or three steps and got ounces per inch. I didn't really care what the actual pounds per inch was but it would be pretty easy to calculate that. I was just looking for the difference between springs.

Dragonfire

iTrader: (1)

This is what you are looking for....

Integy Spring Dyno

You just stick your shock in and measure the load increase over any distance you like. It also does conventional motor springs.

ddesros2

iTrader: (9)

Apexspeed- That integy dyno will do the trick, or take a known weight that you can balance on a spring (say 1 or 2 lbs on a TC spring) and use a caliper to measure how much the spring is compressed under load compared to on with no load.

Also, the paint job in your avitar looks very familiar. I have the exact same paint job on a TC3 with a BMI chassis kit that I got off rctech last year (FYI, the car rocks!!)

squarehead

iTrader: (75)

I miss that car. I regret selling it to you. I'm glad you like it, though. I sold it when we were buying a new house, while I had gotten out of racing for a bit. I never liked carpet racing (I'm a dirt oval guy at heart), but that car was fantastic. You got a smokin' deal on a really beautiful car.

I should make a new avatar for myself, I guess.

doug

gearless

Hi ApexSpeed,

Well I have a spring dyno, a very good and precise tool.
I wish I have never used it. Why?
Just because I had measured all my springs, from several makers and man, you can end with such a difference between the same color range, that your wish is to through them away. We pay a huge amount of money for a piece of colored steel, and please don't trust that the same color from the same maker produces the same weight, far from it. I have even a spring pair that the difference between the two are almost 120gr. Incredible isn't it?

Then I have taken out all the springs color and have matched them by weight. Nice to see and have, but if you twist free your car with 4 good scales, isn't worth the trouble.

squarehead

iTrader: (75)

That's exactly why I want to read the springs, though, is to better match the shock setups, as well as KNOWING what springs can do what.

In a dirt oval car, the overall "tweak" or balance is not what we're going for. At any given time, you could have four shocks with 4 different springs on them. It isn't uncommon to have a completely unbalanced chassis on purpose.

I have about 50 springs for Delta shocks from about 3 different sources, and not only are they all different wire diameters, but most of them are different heights. Many of them are not even marked, so I don't know what they are, other than a quick clip of a caliper.

The Integy shock dyno is cool, but at that price, I'm sure you'd have to test a LOT of shocks for it to pay for itself.

squarehead

iTrader: (75)

To clarify, all chassis should be balanced, but in a dirt oval car, you regularly are trying to transfer more weight to one corner of the car than the other, in unequal amounts. We just usually aren't looking for perfect equal weights from one side to the other.


d

gearless

Yeap, I'm talking about my experience in sedans.
I have no experience on any oval, so it might be worth the trouble.
Now the hard part, no method can give you trust results but a good spring dyno. The integy one is very good. You pay what you got.
Please have in mind that any spring changes weight after use and regarding compression, and it's completely different measuring the weight with 1cm (sorry the cm but I'm european) compression or 1,1cm. This means that you have to work with two instruments at the same time; the dyno and a digital caliper.
Good luck and have fun doing that.
You can make a simple but effective way of comparing springs, please note it can't substitute the dyno.
Get a dish scale, a digital caliper and several calibrated weights.
Place the spring beneath on of the scale dishes and put weight till you got, for example, 1 cm compression. Then sum all the weights you have put on the scale and you have the total weight to compress 1cm of that particular spring.
Why the dish scale? Because normally they don't have much resistance and if any it will be the same for all measures.