I am looking to purchase SOFTER soft absorbers for a car I own. Unfortunately all you can find when you look at different brands or models is marketing wank with no objective information. Outside of subjective forum reviews (which are a total nightmare) is there any way to actually know ahead of time whether the shock you're purchasing is going to be softer or firmer than OEM? I get sick and tired of it all being so vague. Clearly when a manufacturer is specing out shocks for an application they have an objective way to judge them so they can be paired properly with the springs, so I'm hoping I can learn how that's done.
Can Anyone School Me On How Shock Absorber Firmness Is Measured/Advertised?
- Thread starter Msmith68w
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Maybe others can provide better information on how to chose shocks with a soft ride, but the only standard I have found so far is to buy the cheapest shock you can find if you want a soft ride, and because it is a cheap shock do not expect it to last as long.
BTW I have had severe back pain for may years, and Pittsburgh roads get pot-holes from the freeze/thaw cycles of winter, so I appreciate a soft ride. In fact the softness of ride is one of the main things I looked for in a vehicle when choosing my new to me vehicle. That and reliability. I test drove smaller vehicles that got great gas millage when I was looking for a vehicle with a soft ride, and that just proved that if you want a soft ride you also need a vehicle with some weight to it. And forget about the sport version of vehicles. The sport versions have tight suspensions that corner well on roads with a lot of turns in them, but the tight suspensions transmit every bump in the road to you.
BTW I have had severe back pain for may years, and Pittsburgh roads get pot-holes from the freeze/thaw cycles of winter, so I appreciate a soft ride. In fact the softness of ride is one of the main things I looked for in a vehicle when choosing my new to me vehicle. That and reliability. I test drove smaller vehicles that got great gas millage when I was looking for a vehicle with a soft ride, and that just proved that if you want a soft ride you also need a vehicle with some weight to it. And forget about the sport version of vehicles. The sport versions have tight suspensions that corner well on roads with a lot of turns in them, but the tight suspensions transmit every bump in the road to you.
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I have heard this before as a guideline, but in the modern era I doubt it to be true. Even the cheapest shocks claim to be specced to OEM standards (which means similar performance when new, they just wear out faster from cheaper materials). Plus I don't want to be changing them all the time. Ideally I'd like to find a good quality shock that is just tuned softer than the stock Sachs units.
I am very sympathetic to your situation. In the last few decades auto makers have completely lost their flipping minds with wheel/tire and suspension packages. There's not 1 car for sale on the market today that rides like luxury cars did 20-30 years ago when people actually cared about smooth comfortable rides. Nowadays luxury means lots of cutting edge techie stuff crammed into cars with the same rock hard seats, stiff suspensions, low profile tires, and crummy interiors. It's quite disappointing.
I don't have any sort of pain issues, but here in Indianapolis our roads are in utterly awful condition too. With the current setup on my car I feel every little imperfection in the road. Rough pavement (which is nearly all of it) is almost completely intolerable. Not so much from a seating perspective, but just in terms of there being a tremendous amount of noise transmitted to the cabin, and the sharp jolts causing a lot of annoying squeaks, creaks, and rattles. With lower profile tires (45 series), a stiff suspension, and unibody construction, there just isn't enough isolation from all that harshness....and this is in a sedan that weighs 4400lbs.
What they are when you buy and 10K miles latter may be two different things. I buy normal Blistein shocks. The best you can get. Not that much more in cost. Then you cannot say to yourself maybe I should have spent another $25 per shock and got a better shock. Labor is the same to install a cheap shock or the best shock. Except you will be installing a cheap shock so often nothing will have a chance to rust.
google "shock absorber dyno"
Best is a relative term. Best at what? What is best for someone who wants a smooth ride is not the best for someone who wants their car to be a canyon carver.
Labor is just my time.
If want a softer ride also look at your tires. Some have very stiff sidewalls while others have ballooned out flexy ones.
If your car has low aspect ratio tires (large rim, skinny tire) the ride will be rougher.
If your car has low aspect ratio tires (large rim, skinny tire) the ride will be rougher.
I agree with this. Just get smaller wheels with more sidewall or a softer tire first.
Smaller wheels with a taller sidewall should help some. I would say it is more the spring tuning than the shocks. You can put firm shocks on a softly sprung car and it will still be pretty soft. You could probably switch to the base model springs on your car to get a little more cushion along with the smaller wheels. Aside from that, i'm not sure there is much you can do safely. If your car is a base model, that is about as good as it will get then. Aside from switching to worn out components.
To your question, I can take you all the way through vibration, damping and resisting movement/rigidity.
Its "vague" because terms like "soft" and "firm" have no engineering definition.
The other issue is that no 2 suspensions have the exact weight ( both static and under dynamic forces), degrees of freedom and geometry so the exact shock configuration can give a different level of damping in each scenario.
Hard for the average guy to do this and it takes special equipment and some design data to do it.
Also, a shock works on a compression side and a release side both with different force and velocity requirements to stabilize somewhere in the middle at rest.
Its not that anyone is being deliberately vague- this is just a hard thing to nail down and literally if you changed a tire/rim combo or other settings it would require to start figuring again to get "softer" ( or firmer) response depending on all the other forces that change adjusted.
I hate big wheels. I don't want wheels any bigger than needed to clear the brake calipers.
I'm heavily considering stepping down from the stock 245/45r20s to a 255/55r18 (which will require finding wheels I like, which is very challenging). Trouble with that is I am getting conflicting accounts from people online. One guy with a Charger/Challenger/300 will say that he "upgraded" from 18s to 20s and didn't feel any difference in ride, while another will say they test drove both and noticed a big difference. I think it's more of a difference in the drivers than the setups. Some people are completely oblivious, while others are very sensitive (like me). It's hard to justify the thousands of dollars involved in a wheel/tire change on the hope that the difference will be significant enough to solve the problem. I'm 100% sure there will be some improvement with a little more sidewall, but with no quantitative way to analyze it (and no spare wheels/tire to test before buying) I just can't know HOW MUCH difference it will make. I mean think about it, my old truck has 70 series tires on it and still managed to ride firm because it has a firm suspension meant for doing work. Tall tire doesn't automatically mean soft ride.
Really that's the entire issue here. Any of these changes require substantial financial investment with no clear evidence ahead of time that they will be sufficient to fix the ride quality to my standard. Also, if I drop 2 grand in wheels/tires going down to 18s, and the ride isn't fixed, that money is totally wasted because the car will sell for more with 20s on it.
The saddest thing of all is that selling the car and buying something different doesn't even solve the issue either. Unless I want to buy a 20 year old American luxo-boat. Everything rides like **** now in stock form. The elimination of body on frame cars hasn't helped.
Really that's the entire issue here. Any of these changes require substantial financial investment with no clear evidence ahead of time that they will be sufficient to fix the ride quality to my standard. Also, if I drop 2 grand in wheels/tires going down to 18s, and the ride isn't fixed, that money is totally wasted because the car will sell for more with 20s on it.
The saddest thing of all is that selling the car and buying something different doesn't even solve the issue either. Unless I want to buy a 20 year old American luxo-boat. Everything rides like **** now in stock form. The elimination of body on frame cars hasn't helped.
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Step one would be to define "ride quality" in terms of time and dimension so it can be calculated. Then there has to be a standard ( I would suggest a flat plane)
This is like that 70's commercial with the truck and the stick on the door and the one on the tire hitting things.
You define what you want( the stick at the door) and then you can measure time and velocity of the stick on the tire.
The science is straight up- its the measuring that's difficult because people aren't used to doing this. ( and conversely OEM's don't offer it freely)
remember the shock/ strut job is to absorb the 'shock' and control the 'rebound' pretty complex engineering using oils, seals relief valving etc. temperature always impacts the equations. oem spec is the place to start, but you want softer ride look for slightly lower pressure in primary side and slower release on secondary. this can be achieved with pressure relief internal valving.
So I wanted to test whether the issue I was having was suspension or tire related. It just so happened that the dealer by my house had an '18 RT with the same sport suspension and 20" wheels that my car has. Only difference (that would matter) is that the tires weren't on their last leg, and the '18 had 18k miles where mine has 94k. So I went and test drove it.
The '18 still has a taut ride, but it wasn't harsh like mine. I didn't get the same interior creaks and rattles over bumps that mine has, nor did I get the booming sensation in the cab. The interior stuff can probably in part be attributed to age and things just getting a little loose. On the whole though, I found the ride to be acceptable. I might just throw a new set of tires on my car in the OEM size and hope for the best. If that's not sufficient I can revisit the idea of swapping out the R/T springs/shocks with those from an SE or SXT.
The '18 still has a taut ride, but it wasn't harsh like mine. I didn't get the same interior creaks and rattles over bumps that mine has, nor did I get the booming sensation in the cab. The interior stuff can probably in part be attributed to age and things just getting a little loose. On the whole though, I found the ride to be acceptable. I might just throw a new set of tires on my car in the OEM size and hope for the best. If that's not sufficient I can revisit the idea of swapping out the R/T springs/shocks with those from an SE or SXT.
Well, disappointingly, the thousand dollars spent today on a new set of Continentals in the stock size didn't make any perceptible impact on the issue...
Sorry to hear that but no appreciable difference should be expected from the tire.
A tire's "flexibility" (for lack of a better term) is for grabbing the road and resisting deformity on loading such as cornering.
At best its a minor factor in overall "ride quality" (or the perception thereof) with a few extreme exceptions of course
Need to address geometry and damping
Cant work around physics
A tire's "flexibility" (for lack of a better term) is for grabbing the road and resisting deformity on loading such as cornering.
At best its a minor factor in overall "ride quality" (or the perception thereof) with a few extreme exceptions of course
Need to address geometry and damping
Cant work around physics
Here's what confuses the hell out of me. Before I bought the tires I went to a local dealer and drove a newer Charger R/T (same suspension, just lower miles) that also had 20s on it. Same tire size, same suspension...and it rode fine. Little firm, but acceptable. My car however, rides like a dumpster fire. Everything in the suspension is tight, none of the rubber shows signs of dry rot...I don't get it. I can't explain the difference at all.
This sorta goes along with what others have said so here is what I did on a 2006 Mazda3.
I installed Monroe OE Spec Struts & Shocks front & rear which were known to be a bit softer than OE and others...however, not that I knew they would be softer, I took a chance and it worked!
Also, I installed better riding tires in the Mazda3 in the OE size of 205-55-16. I didn't change the tire size, just went with a better ride quality tire.
This car already handled well enough to take some of its handling prowess away in need of more ride quality.
I installed Monroe OE Spec Struts & Shocks front & rear which were known to be a bit softer than OE and others...however, not that I knew they would be softer, I took a chance and it worked!
Also, I installed better riding tires in the Mazda3 in the OE size of 205-55-16. I didn't change the tire size, just went with a better ride quality tire.
This car already handled well enough to take some of its handling prowess away in need of more ride quality.
Have you had a 3rd party drive your car and see if they "feel" the same thing?
Problems like this can be "perceived" but they can also be real and extremely difficult to detect too.
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