Your Car’s Suspension
Your vehicle’s suspension is one of the most important aspects to your vehicle. It’s goal is to maximize the friction between the road and your tires. This ensures maximum traction. Your suspension also makes your steering stable and makes driving more comfortable. All of these things are incredibly important.
If you look at some of the most expensive suspension systems on the market today, you will be amazed at how advanced they are. The truth is that it doesn’t matter how much power your engine is putting out if you don’t have a suspension system that can handle it. If you have all of that power but cannot control your car, then it’s useless.
Vehicle Dynamics 101
As the roads that we drive on are not perfectly flat, we need suspension systems. On a perfectly smooth road, the only forces acting on your tires should be gravity, the weight of the vehicle, the normal force of the road (the force of the road pushing back up against the tire equal to the force of gravity), and the friction between the road and the tire. When you introduce imperfections into the road, it introduces other forces onto the tires.
Isaac Newton taught us about the law of motion. He taught us that all forces have magnitude and direction. When your tires bump along the road, they accelerate upward. The magnitude at which this occurs depends on the size of the bump you drove over.
If you didn’t have a suspension system, all of this vertical energy would be transferred directly to the frame. This would force the frame to also move upwards. This means that your vehicle would leave the ground entirely. Then as the vehicle falls back downwards as a result of gravity, they would slam the ground. Your suspension system will absorb the energy of the vertical acceleration. This prevents the frame and body from moving as a result of a bump.
Let’s Take It a Step Further
So far, we have only considered the ride of a vehicle. The two things covered so far are road isolation and road holding. Road isolation if the vehicle’s ability to absorb or isolate road shock. Road Handling is the vehicle’s ability to maintain contact with the road. There is one other concept to take into account when considering the dynamics of your vehicle. That is known as cornering. When cornering the centrifugal force pushes outwards on a car from the center of gravity. This will cause one side of the vehicle to raise and one side to lower. This is known as body roll. Your suspension is also responsible for minimizing body roll.
Vehicle Chassis Systems
Your suspension is made up of several components. To help you understand this and visualize it, take a look at the video below. It will explain the basics of your suspension system and some of the different types of suspension.
Two very important parts to understand are shocks and struts. Shocks, or shock absorbers, do exactly what their name suggests. They absorb the shock from the road. They are a type of damper that takes the force introduced from the road and prevent the car from bouncing. Your strut is a component that is mounted to the chassis of the vehicle at the top. This is where the coil spring is mounted. Your coil spring is what is responsible for maintaining your vehicle’s ride height. Struts are also dampers and absorb the shock from the road. Your vehicle will have either shocks or struts but never both on the same tire.
Shocks and Struts Inspection
You can very easily test the ability of your shock absorbers or struts by performing a simple bounce test. To do this, you only need to go to each corner of your vehicle. Push down hard on the car and let go. The vehicle should bounce up and then lower back to its ride height. If the car bounces more than twice, then you need to install new shocks or struts.
You can also visually inspect your suspension components. Your shocks and struts should be straight and clean. They also should not have any dents on them. You also might notice fluid leaking from them. This is a sign that they will need to be replaced.
When trying to get new parts, make sure that you know whether you have shocks or struts. Some vehicles even use shocks on one axle and struts on the other. Make sure that you buy the right parts as you can’t install a strut where a shock was or vice versa.
Suspension Repair
Changing out suspension parts can vary in difficulty. It depends greatly on the vehicle and the type of suspension it uses. Generally, changing out rear shocks on a vehicle is fairly simple. You can do it yourself with only a minor amount of automotive knowledge. Depending on the make and model of your car, a set of shocks can cost $25-$350 each. For the common cars that most people drive, your shocks will be on the cheaper side of that spectrum. To change out for shocks or struts yourself, you can expect to spend about $150-$250. To have a shop do this for you could cost you around $30-$100 each side in labor. So, if you are the kind of person that likes to do things yourself, you can save yourself some money here.
Below we attached a video which shows how to change the shocks on your car. This is a very informative video which explains how to do it and also shows how fast it can be done.
You Know Suspension
Now you are ready to work on your own suspension system. You have learned the basics of your suspension system and also some of the engineering mechanics that go into it. You have also learned about how to change out your own shocks or struts. You now know suspension systems. If you notice anything strange about the ride or steering of your vehicle, you now have the basic knowledge needed to start to repair it.
Our sponsor for this article is:
A-1 Auto Tech, Inc. 89 Pioneer Way, Mountain View, CA 94041 650-487-2240 https://mountainviewautorepairs.com/