Coil over question

I'm seriously thinking about putting coil overs under my Fairmont wagon. What length shocks and what stroke do I want and what should the spring rate be?

the spring rate,length,and stroke all depend on the weight and use of the car.i use 5" stroke strange dbl adj's with 130#spring. if your gona do it be sure and get a good dbl adj shock,you'll be happy you did.

cool40 wrote: if your gona do it be sure and get a good dbl adj shock,you'll be happy you did.

Just be ready for a long learning curve, unless of course you have them huge cheater tires

Wish I had a Fairmont wagon. It could be a friggin' Xerox machine in the brackets.

yellowhorse7 wrote:

cool40 wrote: if your gona do it be sure and get a good dbl adj shock,you'll be happy you did.

Just be ready for a long learning curve, unless of course you have them huge cheater tires

what kinda shock would you use for the baby tires?

cool40 wrote:the spring rate,length,and stroke all depend on the weight and use of the car.i use 5" stroke strange dbl adj's with 130#spring. if your gona do it be sure and get a good dbl adj shock,you'll be happy you did.

Not to hijack but being as someone already brought it up how would one determine the best stroke for a combination?

Example my truck can only have 3 inchs of suspension compression before it will hit the bump stops but I get 1-2" inchs of body seperation so does that mean a 5 inch stroke would work best?

yellowhorse7 wrote:

cool40 wrote: if your gona do it be sure and get a good dbl adj shock,you'll be happy you did.

Just be ready for a long learning curve, unless of course you have them huge cheater tires

Long??? Just got my suspension working decent should I leave the single adjustable??? Got some tuning tips?

Of course a DA is better than a SA....

All I'm saying is that it takes a bit of a learning curve to get the DA's figured out, at least for us small-tired guys.

bigblok2000ranger wrote:

cool40 wrote:the spring rate,length,and stroke all depend on the weight and use of the car.i use 5" stroke strange dbl adj's with 130#spring. if your gona do it be sure and get a good dbl adj shock,you'll be happy you did.

Not to hijack but being as someone already brought it up how would one determine the best stroke for a combination?

Example my truck can only have 3 inchs of suspension compression before it will hit the bump stops but I get 1-2" inchs of body seperation so does that mean a 5 inch stroke would work best?

yellowhorse7 wrote:

cool40 wrote: if your gona do it be sure and get a good dbl adj shock,you'll be happy you did.

Just be ready for a long learning curve, unless of course you have them huge cheater tires

Long??? Just got my suspension working decent should I leave the single adjustable??? Got some tuning tips?

Yep....full loose in the front isn't optimal

yellowhorse7 wrote:Of course a DA is better than a SA....

All I'm saying is that it takes a bit of a learning curve to get the DA's figured out, at least for us small-tired guys.

its kinda like having a 4-link,all that adjustment but only one spot is "best".

LOL, Well I have s/a with ladder bars and leafsprings with housing floaters and 90/10 up front. 9 ways from Calvert set in the #5 haven't got to the point of working on adjusting them yet in the rear. It will be getting d/a with coil-overs probably over the winter mainly in the interest of losing weight (with the added adjustability as a bonus).

P.S. Hey Tony looks like the little tires are gonna work

With Coil overs on the front, do you use the OE spring rate as a starting point to determine what spring to get? I'm in this boat now. Trying to decide if I should get lowering springs or just go to coil overs and move on. My application is an F150 with a BBF.. Oe spring rate is 337 with a load rating of 1258.