Cascade Crew

[Schultzy89GTA]

The Air Ride suspension has been the darling of the magazines for the last few years including several well publicized (thanks Primedia) track days. At these track days, automotive journalists have been allowed to flog Air Ride equipped rides of various shapes and sizes around road courses to demonstrate their capabilities.

I am curious to hear opinions on how an Air Ride suspension would compare performance-wise to a more traditionally modded thirdgen suspension.

-Schultzy

[Dewey316]

When was the last time you saw race car, with air ride on the side?

Really, Its one thing to impress the magazine editors (all you have to do is pay them), it also easy to impress Kandied on TGO (all you have to do, is give him the parts to make his car pretty). Now getting the NASA and SCCA guys that race, to run a pair of them, is a whole diffrent matter.

Heck, I may just e-mail Karl Hunter, I'm sure he will have very good technical explanation as to the downside to bags.

I am also going to go out on a limb, and guess that it takes some very signifant shocks, that are valved completely diffrently, to get the most out of air-bags.

[chevymad]

The main problem I see with bags is the spring rates. In order to get good handling you want a low car with stiff springs. But in order for bags to act like stiff springs you need higher air pressure, which jack's the car up. Then if you lower the air pressure the springs get soft and you bottom out even easier. Thing's work exactly backwards from what you want. They've been working on getting this right and have come up with a few adjustable systems. The one adjustable spring rate system I've seen used 3 different add on air chambers plumbed to the bag. Spring rate=pressure and air volume. So by using different size air chambers plumbed through a valve to the bag you can change the air volume seperately from pressure. I guess it works ok, but now you've added 3 air chambers for each spring, a valve for each and the order of complexity just went up a bunch.

[Dewey316]

Here we go, it took a while, as Karl doesn't check his e-mail all that often. But here is what Karl Hunter had to say.