Gaz front coilovers (assisted)

[Paul bow]

Hi guys
Anyone had tried or got any advice as to the gaz front assistor coilovers sold by Sng.
They can help put about 40/80lbs on without obviously needing to upgrade the awful job of changing torsion bars..look very well made, but I’m concerned about picture frame loading but at 40/80lbs probably negligible?
Any advice most gratefully received..

[mgcjag]

Hi Paul.....if you have a problem with your front ride height then adjust your torsion bars...if they are past it then change them.....if you know what your doing and follow the service manual its a straight forward job......why try to mask a problem by fitting something to cover it up?.........Steve

[MarekH]

I don't think this even works from a technical point of view.

Consider that you have not adjusted the torsion bar, but instead have simply raised the ride height with an extra spring onto the picture frame. Instead of taking a quarter of the weight of the car per side, the torsion bar is now totally unloaded by the extra height it has been unwound by and the new spring is taking the whole weight of that corner of the car for 100% of the time that the car is between the old ride height and the new ride height. Only when you have gone over a bump big enough to compress the old torsion bar are you sharing ("assisting") the load between the two.

Put bluntly, you can use this to alter the spring rate and rebound characteristics by putting loading into the frame aswell as the body of the car based upon the resting ride height of the old torsion bar, but you are simply substituting in a new spring for old if you are resetting the ride height instead.

So no, you can't use this to simply change the ride height without putting 100% of the load of the car into the picture frame unless you also reset the torsion bar to that height aswell.

kind regards
Marek

[Paul bow]

Straight forward answers guys makes perfect sense and I’ll ditch that thought then..
Thank you

[gtjoey]

I never really understood it either.
Years ago I thought that was to REPLACE the torsion bars and adjust for racing but its just a patch.
Good choice, in this case go stock.
gtjoey1314

[Paul bow]

Thanks joey, I looked back over old pics of racing E types at goodwood and trawled through the internet and they can’t be selling many because I only found one picture of someone with them on their car, no race cars nothing.. must be good reason for it….

[Phil P]

The torsion bar will be taking its share ( dependent on the rates of the torsion bar and the new assister spring) of the load and the additional spring a small proportion. After all it's an assister spring. Imagine it as if you have simply placed an additional spring over the shock absorber and so it provides a bit extra load carrying capability....additional to but not instead of the torsion bar. This can have benefits in a little extra roll resistance at the expense of a jittery ride; probably not the best route for a road car. As everyone has stated, changing your ride height is best achieved by adjusting the torsion bars.
Yours,
Phil

[DWW]

I guess if you are building a race car you would want less suspension compliance with out affecting the ride height and that is where the coilovers assistance would benefit the ride resulting in improved roll control.