Originally Posted by
30Tooth
Maybe the current topic is not sinking in my brain cells but tire conformity phenomenon can be isolated from total vehicle weight right? The way I see,with greater weight on the vehicle the bump has to do more force to lift the buggy/shock has more work to do right? Now,the vehicle is the same but we removed 50% of weight from it. The shock is tuned to new conditions,so it still absorbs the bump. We have went down on spring rate and oil viscosity,right? So provided we tuned the shock travel,height and shock characteristics to a certain bump profile,weight isn't part of the equation.
If you played out your scenario, but you also removed 50% of the weight from the suspension (turnbuckles, arms, hubs, rims, tires, caster blocks, shock shafts, etc) then your situation would work out perfectly. Since it's a lot easier to remove weight from the chassis than it is from the suspension, this usually can't happen.
Imagine you tossed a bowling ball at two guys and they weren't expecting to catch it. One guy is 250lbs and the other is 150. Imagine the suspension is the bowling ball and the chassis is the guy. The heavier guy subles back a step or two before stepping back to his original location. The lighter guy stumbles back further, but sill returns back to where he was standing. Now, rotate this analogy 90 degrees. So that the ball is being thrown upwards. Whenever you hit a bump, the tires are given an upward velocity, thus momentum. The only boy able to push against the tire and suspension (unsprung mass) is the chassis (sprung mass). A heavier car won't be thrown as high into the air, thus will have the tires back on the ground sooner.
Please understand I'm not advocating throwing lead at your car to overcome poor handling. I'm trying to convey the idea that losing unsprung mass is a huge benefit to handling, primarily because the less work the chassis has to do on the suspension, the better your car will handle.
Forgive me if I mistyped anything...
-sent from my iPhone on the way to the ER