Riddle me this: Removed all preload and lost droop. Feal 441+ install.

I'm scratching my head on this one and can't figure out what's going on. It's possible I have some terrible error using my tape measure, but beyond that I'm at a loss. I installed my Feal 441+'s and am trying to get droop to come in around 1.5" (recommended is 1.5" - 2"). Currently I'm focusing on the two fronts. When I first installed them I did not change any preload or height adjustments and my measurements were: BEFORE :: On Ground Heights :: Fender to ground: FL: 25.375" FR: 25.625" Fender to center of hub nut: FL: 13.125 FR: 13.25 :: Lifted Heights :: Fender to center of hub nut: FL: 14.25 (Droop of 1.125") FR: 14.3125 (Droop of 1.0625") I then adjusted two things 1) I lowered the right side by 1/4" so L and R would even on ground and 2) I took out all preload (per advice of Feal) and left it just snug on the spring. Then measured again: AFTER :: On Ground Heights :: Fender to ground: FL: 25.3125" FR: 25.4375" Fender to center of hub nut: FL: 13.125 FR: 13.25 :: Lifted Heights :: Fender to center of hub nut: FL: 14.125 (Droop of 1") FR: 14.1875 (Droop of .9375") Note the Droop is LOWER after I took out about 3mm of spring tension. I'm totally at a loss. I spoke to Feal again, and he is not sure either. He said it might be my Lower Control Arm ball joint isn't seated properly so the arm isn't extending as long as it should while raised. But i can't tell if it is or not. I can say that I installed it with the carrier jacked up and I took it to Torque spec. I can physically just about shift the spring a little, so the preload is at zero. But when I lower the car there is so little movement in the wheel height in relation to the fender. Has anyone run into this before??? I even tried using multiple methods to measure. A string from a marked point on the fender to the center of wheel and to the top of rim. I then used some vice grips to measure from fender to inner lip of top of rim. Again and again, it's an inch to an inch and a smidge. But when you watch the car lower, it looks more like four inches. I'm so so soooooooooo confused! [[I attached a MOV file too, but not sure if it actually works in the post]]

I'm having my own problems with mine but similar. The more droop you have equals less shock travel. We don't have that much travel with the bump stop to begin with. Don't think the 1.5-2.0 is a good setting. I'm thinking 1.0-1.25 is better.

First I would be measuring from the ground to the control arm bolt to get an accurate measurement. When you lower the car do you roll it back and forth to let the suspension settle?

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The more droop the more downward travel you have

Quotes source post: 20104074

As mentioned by hbdunn already, after lowering the car back onto the ground you must roll it back and forth until you see (measure!) no further reduction of ride height. Best way is to mark the 4 spots on the floor where the tyres are before you begin and take the car around the block after coming down off the lift/jack and position it right there where the 4 markings are for the next lift to re-adjust (and measure). You measure the same distance 'fender to center of hub' nut before and after change, whilst the measurement for 'fender to ground' change for the smaller. That cannot be (other than your front tyres losing pressure) so there lies a mistake. Choose one single way of measuring ride height that is easily repeatable and therefore has smallest risk of error between measurements and stick with that. I personally believe that measuring from bottom wheel flange to wheel arch at 12 o'clock is easiest, as you can hook your tape measure between tyre and flange. I find that the Porsche-way as described by hbdunn requires equipment I don't have and using a tape measure I've not managed to get repeatable results. Change one thing at a time to avoid confusion. Having set the preload to almost zero with new springs might mean you have to revisit that in the future since they will settle a little and could then rattle whenever a wheel goes to full droop. So consider giving them half or 1 turn of pre-load each, zero being the spring is barely in contact with top and bottom collars. Round the measurements to 1 digit decimal inches. The 2nd and 3rd digits are irrelevant for ride height and you can't measure that accurately anyway but it carries the risk of mixed up digits and errors in your calculations. The Feal tech's hint is not relevant as you haven't changed anything regarding the attachment of control arm to wheel carrier between your adjustments regarding ride height and pre-load, so ignore that... When that nut is torqued to spec, you're good. The provided spring will determine how much droop you will end up with, once you have set pre-load to almost zero. Increasing it from the ~1" you currently have to 1.5 or 2" you will need either need a spring (of the same stiffness/spring rate) that is 0.5-1" longer, when relaxed or fit a flat coil helper spring. In case of the helper spring, you need one that gives you 0.5-1" travel before it is fully collapsed. You want the shortest possible tender spring that yields this travel. Eta: If the current spring is so long that you cannot turn the lower spring collar down to fit a helper spring, you need a shorter main spring (of the same stiffness) as well as the tender spring. *Turning of the shock body relative to the wheel carrier by, say, 1/4" to change ride height will not yield exactly 1/4" at the wheel arch incase of a McPherson strut like the 996 has but approx. 10% less, since the strut is inclined. And now to a possible explanation why you see less droop after reducing pre-load. IF the shock absorber was fully extended when the spring had 3mm of pre-load and it still is fully extended with zero pre-load, then it is by the amount of pre-load reduction that the force that is pushing the shock absorber apart (i.e. extending it) is smaller. Assuming a spring stiffness of about 70N/mm for a after-market coilover strut and reducing the pre-load by 3mm yields a reduction of 210N ~48lbf. I reckon if you pull the front wheel down by hanging 48lbs onto it, you will see the amount of droop you had before.

Remove the anti sway bar attachment to the shock for independence from the other wheel.

With 0 preload your droop is 100% determined by the spring rate. No coilover adjustment will increase droop more than 0 preload. Recheck your methods and measurements... Be careful with 0 preload with car jacked up suspension hanging down,, if you can move the spring around while suspension is hanging at full droop, good chance over rough terrain that might put the suspension at full droop a rattling/banging spring is a good possibility.... Some coilovers with slip over retainer collar/clips will dislodge the retainer at full droop with no preload on a big bump. My advice, get the right spring to set up desired droop. Try what you have first might be just right. I'd also turn in the spring adjustment ring till you just can't move the spring at all in full droop... jmho

Quotes source post: 20104772

These springs are paired specifically with these coilovers for the 996. Feal said droop should be 1.5"-2". It's not a question of right spring, it's why are my measurements coming out so odd. The intention is not to leave the spring at 0mm, it comes with 3mm of preload, i reduced it only to try and get closer to 1.5l droop. Im still at a loss of what to try. I haven't driven the car yet, I have rolled it back and forth a little. Appreciate the responses above but I'm not I fully understand what i should be doing.

I don't know what else to say but 'read my post again and understand what I'm saying'. It's all in there but it is up to you now to put the effort in to understand it. Ask specific questions if you don't understand a certain aspect of what I'm trying to get across. The short of it is: You cannot achieve more droop than the spring is compressed from its free length to the length it has when carrying the weight of the corner it's fitted at. From your measurements the spring is compressed by ~1" and you're trying to get 1.5-2" droop. That won't work without the measures I outlined.

Quotes source post: 20104819

Well, not sure what else to tell you. It is the spring/spring preload that determines the droop, period. Not sure what spring they did give you, or how it was measured, or how it was determined to be the 'right 'spring for your car. Or how they determined what the correct droop should be for you setup road conditions/application. Do the springs have LB markings on them..? Spring rate can be measured in a press, compress exactly 1" to get spring rate.. Take precaution to keep spring captive. Can tell you this. Have set up many many different vehicle type suspension systems. I've set preload where appropriate after much trial by error till the best setup for me was found. I've used progressive springs, dual rate springs, helper springs, tender springs, etc. All have their place in different applications. Just changed the coilover shock on my fat tire mountain bike( no elec motor). Took out a clearly marked 750lb spring. Replaced with another 750 lb spring since the spring rate/droop seemed perfect on the original shock. just needed the rebound/compression dampening of a high quality new shock. So got a high quality shock with all the features with a clearly marked 750lb spring. Now the preload at just a little above 0 like the original shock setup, has almost no droop compared to about 3/4" on original spring. The bike is noticeably stiffer by a large margin. Keep in mind this is a oil only shock not an air pressure shock, just oil like the original was. So what my little anecdotal above story is trying to tell you, is not all spring rates are measured the same, or maybe not all springs in a manufacturing run are measured at all after being made at the factory. As my mtn bike spring rates are clearly not both 750 lb. Possibly the very high quality coil overs like Ohlins are all exactly rated/measured/choose/setup as they should be and are checked for accuracy... jmho

Well I'm posting the ongoing findings here in case helps anyone else with the Feal 996 kit. I'm purely going off what Feal suggests for droop. Feal seem to be well respected on this forum. They developed this kit on a 996 owned by a Feal guy. They have Swift spring, 6k front and 12k rear spring rates. I took the car for its first drive and did some before and after measurements using the fender to the edge of the wheel rim. Yes I rolled the car back and forth, yes it always comes back to the same spot as it lines up with cement seam. I removed preload 100% so spring was totally loose. Then set to 0mm, then added 2mm. Front UP Left - Fender to Rim Edge: 4.75" DOWN Left - Fender to Rim Edge: 3.69" Droop - 1.06" UP Right - Fender to Rim Edge: 4.75" DOWN Right - Fender to Rim Edge: 3.75" Droop - 1.00" Rear UP Left - Fender to Rim Edge: 5" DOWN Left - Fender to Rim Edge: 3.88" Droop - 1.13" UP Right - Fender to Rim Edge: 5.19" DOWN Right - Fender to Rim Edge: 3.9" Droop - 1.3" Guess I'll wait for the alignment and corner balance to see what they say.

These rate are too high unless its a track car not a road car. this is why i took off my feals 441+ and now have nitron roadsprots with 4kg and 8kg spring. the feals where so stiff on the road. the uk roads are terrible i was getting out of the car with a bad back. i went down too 5kg front and 10kg rear and then 3.5kg front and 8kg rear to get the car to ride something like it should this also let me set droop etc correctly this was much better on the road but still an improvement over stock on track.

Where did you get your Nitrons? I've been chasing a too stiff problem for a few months with my Feals. I have 4k front 10k rear and finally starting to understand what's going on. When I leave in the morning I can open the front hood and push down on the hood latch area and get a 1"-2" movement. It starts out pretty nice then by the end of my trip it feels harsh again. Then I do the same push down in front with no movement too stiff and fender height is 1/4" lower also shock squeaks. The next morning I can again push the car down like it was before along with normal ride height, I'll be talking to Feal to see what they say, been very disappointed so far.

Quotes source post: 20105760

Well the plan for this car is heavy canyon and occasional track use. No commuting. I have a 996 Cabriolet also that is for date nights When I ordered the Feals i selected road racing, but i think that just has to do with valving (though don't quote me on that). Will springs soften over time and increase droop? It's just odd that when i watch the car lower it looks like four inches of compression, but then its only and inch...

Quotes source post: 20105719

Consider asking Feal themselves how to achieve their recommendation for droop on their 996 kit. Spring rates are expressed in (weight)force per unit of deflection...I take it those rates are meant to read 6kg/mm front and 12kg/mm rear? 1" of droop yields about 0.9" of spring deflection plus 2mm pre-load, your spring force with above spring rate equals (0.9"�25,4mm/inch+2mm)�6kg/mm=149kg Transforming that to wheel load 149x0.9=135kg. Considering that the wheel load of a 996 C2 is approximately double, it can only mean that either the bump stop (and a little bit the 150psi gas pressure inside the shock absorber) is carrying the rest of the weight and/or (unlikely) the 6kg/mm spring is double that With the front wheel up in the air, how far can you move the bump stop between its upper and lower position along the piston rod? Good quality springs don't soften and settle only a tiny amount. Show us pictures in side view of front wheel up in the air and another one with car settled on the ground, please.

Quotes source post: 20105948

your only going to get more droop with those springs with a helper setup but for your use case this is the correct spring to go far or even higher when using sticky tyres. I would just let the geo / corner weight company set it all up and crack on with driving it. Spring wights / damper valving is always a trade off between comtront and grip compromising for what best suits your requirements. My feals where great for fast road / track driving just not comfy enough for my main use.

Quotes source post: 20105937

​​​​​​​I got them from prepworks in the uk. I would talk to feal as it sounds like you have a valving issue. mite need the damper dynoed to see what the issue is and rebuilt

your better to measure droop via the piston shaft not at the fender tbh. I did mine like this to get 35% droop on my feals 441+ Front 106mm damper length so 106mm / 0.8 x 0.35 = 46mm of droop Rear 82mm shock length so 82mm / 0.8 x35 = 35mm

Quotes source post: 20106694

Should you factor in the bump stop when measuring shaft length. When you remove 1.8” droop and approx 1” bump stop it doesn’t leave very much shock travel left.

Ok, here is what I've done. I'm trying to follow along and appreciate everyone chiming in. One thing to note, I can not move the suspension up or down at all when the wheel is off in the air. Also, there are no bump stops, at least rubber ones, and sorry if bump stop means something else in coil over speak, I'm new to this. I only focused on the Front Left wheel and did a multitude of measurements. For the Ground to Fender and Ground to LCA bolt, I measured the amount of lift with the QuickJack was giving and accounted for that in the measurements (12.25" of lift from jack). UP: Ground to fender 35.75" Down: Ground to fender 25.25" Droop Diff: Via Fender -1.75" UP: Ground to LCA bolt 15" Down: Ground to LCA bolt 5.25" Droop Diff: Via LCA bolt -2.5" UP: Center bolt to fender 13.5 Down: Center bolt to fender 12.25 Droop Diff: Via center bolt -1.25 UP: Rim edge to fender 4.75" Down: Rim edge to fender 3.625" Droop Diff: Via rim edge -1.125" Yes it's not going to be 100% accurate but why are all those droop/diff measurements so different? My lower control arm moves 2.5" but the fender only drops 1.75. And then the wheel measurements are only about 1.25". I also tried to measure the piston length. I wasn't sure if I measure to the entire length even up into the recessed area of the coilover, or just to where it would sit flush if the coilver were to fully compress. So these are both those measurements: 113mm / 104mm (the 113 might be a little less as it was hard to get a the small measure tape up in there and hold it) Thus doing the calculation of [ 'piston lenght' / 0.8 * 0.35 ]. I get 1.4" or 1.28" depending on which of those two measurements is correct. So does this mean I'm chasing my tail and 1.25 is all that's I'm going to get out of the front? Does it matter? Yes, i will be calling Feal back on this too. Here are photos and a video where you can see the wheel lower.

I don't see anyone mentioning the rubber control arm bushings. These are tightened with the car at static rest height, so when the dampers go into droop, of course they will fight the spring (spring wants to push the wheel down, bushing wants to keep the wheel where it is). If you don't have spring preload to push the wheel down, the bushing can win and keep the wheel higher up. If you want to see the car's real droop numbers you need to do all of these measurements with spherical control arm joints (or loosen the bolts on the rubbers). IMO you're chasing your tail. The droop measurement on the non-driven wheels is not that important. The outside front will never be in droop and that's the one doing 90-100% of the front end cornering work on a McPherson strut front, RWD car. That's not to say I think Feal is any good, but missing front droop "recommendations" is the least of your worries when trying to dial in new coilovers on your own, without a data setup or an engineer in the background.

The bump stop is under the dust boot.

Quotes source post: 20107430

Never thought of that, very good point, and probably the correct answer.

You have a 7k spring on the front. that's pretty stiff.

Quotes source post: 20107430

That's kinda what Feal said and why i started this thread in post one. Though i had misinterpreted it and thought my bushing wasn't seated and thus the bushing was pushing back. Per "That's not to say I think Feal is any good,", do you not like their suspension products?

Quotes source posts: 20107610, 20107604

Yes sorry, I checked the stickers and they are 7k and 13k. There is nothing under there, is there supposed to be? The videos i followed I don't remember there being any either.

Thanks for the pictures. A few remarks. -you have a bumpstop, it sits inside the black bellows protection the piston rod. Looks like this -you take the recess into account. -you wrote "I can not move the suspension up or down at all when the wheel is off in the air." I don't know if I understand you correctly but if you mean that you cannot change ride height since you cannot turn the damper body, then that is intended by design. Once the bolt that clamps the coil-over strut to the wheel carrier, then it is tight. If you meant your trying to grab the wheel and move it up further, then I'm not surprised you couldn't move it as its heavy... Using stills from your video I calculate ~1.3-1.5" inches of droop. As mentioned multiple times in this thread, it will not increase other than shortening your bump stop by the amount you want to increase droop. It would be very interesting to know how long that bump stop actually is and if you have a gap between it and the top of the shock absorber body (the silver ring in your picture is that, I presume?) when it sits all the way up in its recess and the car is stationary on the ground. As I 'see' it, based on your measurement and spring rate (ETA: even with 7kg/mm), there is none. If bump stop not visible at the bottom it should sit up top, inside the bellows. Your choice of words or the lack in using the right words is confusing me, I tell you that! Quoting you from your first post "He said it might be my Lower Control Arm ball joint isn't seated properly so the arm isn't extending as long as it should while raised. But i can't tell if it is or not." The ball joint, as I pointed out in.my first post here, is not affected by this. However, the inside bush (which is something different and at a different location), the one between control (aka coffin) arm and subframe is affected by this a tiny little bit. You should, for sake of longevity mainly, undo its nut and retorque it, once you have dialed in the ride height. But, if your current ride height is greater than with the Feals, your droop will reduce a tiny little bit!..

Quotes source post: 20107654

1. Found the bump stop 2. Yes, my words are likely mangled - I did probably misunderstand the Feal tech on his comment about the new LCA joint and bushing. 3. I did torque the subframe bushings that connect to the coffin arm with the wheel jacked at ride height. I actually did this again after my test drive when I re-tested every bolt/nut/etc (including the 118ft lbs ones and busted the back of my hand (not too badly) because I was too lazy to crawl back out from under the car and put on gloves and then the socket slipped off). The ride height from old suspension to new has lowered about 0.75". I'm not even sure what the ideal ride height should be. I did have to lower the right front side a bit, and it's still higher than the left, but I'm going to leave the rest to the alignment person. I'm feeling very confused in general - I'm somewhat surprised I managed to get all the parts connected again lol... If the bushing in the LCA is in fact pushing the wheel carrier back UP when the car is sitting on the ground, that might explain why there is a 0.75" difference between measurements when I measured droop using ground to fender vs ground to LCA bolt method (1.75" vs 2.5"). But I still don't understand why when I measure fender to two spots on the wheel itself, it comes closer to 1.25" of droop. And to think I haven't even dove into the rears yet! I don't think there is anything else I can/should do at this point though... Well, besides getting an alignment/corner balance ( West End Alignment in Huntington Beach, CA if anyone has used them before) he is going to do a full review and prep for canyon/track . And figure why the right side sits higher than the left. And start messing with the damper ***** to learn how each setting feels. And buy new tires (Supercar 3R? RE71RS? PS4S?). And go drive.... I have a 996 cab on newer B4s, so will be an interesting comparison. My neighbor has 997 GT3 and may ask for some ride comparisons. I drove it once, and that's kind of what put all this in motion to have a more dedicated canyon/track car setup. I want to just make sure to again acknowledge how grateful I am for this forum. There is no way in a million years I would have been able to do as much as I've done now to my cars without everyone's help. I had only ever changed my oil and tinkered on my car prior, and now I've installed water pumps, rewired electrical messes, flushed fluids, removed impossible to remove bolts (with fire!), rethreaded new bolt holes,...etc etc... and now time for coffee-- well another coffee....

Quotes source post: 20107619

The control arm bushings indeed push back, that's why for example you have to really give the knuckle the boot, to get the front struts to slide out. Feal dampers in my experience have an insanely narrow adjustment window. It works OK on the track since you can just dial in the best compromise for that day and send it, but as a road car, you can get it right for one street and the next street over you'll be porpoising yourself to death. I tried many sets of these (and even on friends' cars too) based on forum recommendation and now I owe those friends better coilovers.

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So what COs are you currently running that you found more street friendly?

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Honestly, I run BC's in almost everything unless someone's giving me a budget. Off the shelf with Swift springs we've won races, set records, and driven the car home in relative comfort. I do not know if 996 BC's are any good (and I did call, it would take a little convincing for them to make a C2 application) but I do know that their cartridges are very easy to rebuild, so, if you need something better, there are dedicated guys like Chris @ Redshift that can revalve them with actual Bilstein Motorsport components.

Quotes source post: 20107923

Looks like you're in So Cal. Gonna PM you, as I'm interested in hearing about your conversation with West End.

Quotes source post: 20108224

Do you know if you got the "balance comfort and performance" or "road racing" version? Sounds like the road-racing is custom valved per order. I don't really have any experience in this at all, but i'm curious if that matters. After everything I went to install these, I want to make myself feel better about the choice I did notice some freak bounces on my first drive. They were set at 15. I lowered to 5 and it smoothed things out (on a wide range of road types). I havevn' gotten the alignment yet or height and preload set (alignment guy going to go through it all). So hopefully I have some good feedback to report after that. The intension is weekly canyon drives in Angeles Crest, and maybe three track days a year. Just for fun.

Quotes source post: 20111067

If memory serves correctly the set on our Buttonwillow-record Focus RS should've been custom valved. These did their job (Mountune needed Robin Shute and 500hp to go 0.2s under our time), just bouncy on the street. Our other experiences were with off-the-shelf 441's eg. for FRS and VA STI, these were actually slower than stock springs and dampers at Buttonwillow despite being configured for 200tw levels of grip. I'm inclined to think that California roads are just too trash for the assumptions that damper builders make, and you can't get proper performance without sending over shaft data for them to valve around.

Quotes source post: 20107923

@Ben8jam How has this turned out?