Shock Absorbers
Shock absorbers are essential to any buggies handling. They smooth out the bumps and stop your car from bouncing around the corners. They work by slowing the bouncing down, dampening the springs by using oil as a resistance.
By compressing the shock absorber the oil is forced through tiny holes on the piston. The amount of absorption and the stiffness of the shock absorber can be adjusted by two methods. The first is to alter the size of the holes, the second is to adjust the thickness of the oil. The second option is much simpler to do and is therefore the most common.
Thinner oil will give you softer damping and a quiker response on rough surfaces. A thicker oil will give harsher damping and is better for flat surfaces or bigger jumps.
Why have different sized holes then if nobody uses them? Well people do swap and change them because of something called pack. If the holes are small and when the shock absorbers are compressed very quickly the oil inside will almost act like a solid brick, locking the shock absorbers. This will not happen if the holes are large.
Shock Mounting Positions
The shock towers on your suspension arms serve to do more than stopping your suspension from pinging off. Right the way along the shock towers are a number of holes for adjusting your suspension position and angles.
More side traction can be gained by inclining the shocks. This is the option to go for on a track with lots of grip. Making the shocks more vertical will make the car more responsive but you will lose some side traction.
Suspension Droop
Suspension droop is an easy adjustment to make on most buggies. Simply adjusting the grub screw underneath the bottom A-arms will adjust the suspension droop.
Increasing the droop on the front will give better handling on a rough track and will usually give better on-power steering. Lower suspension droop to the front will result in reduced on-power steering but the car will react better over small jumps. Increase the suspension droop at the rear for more rear traction, less at the rear will increase off-power grip.
To summarise:
Less Droop
Front - smooth surfaces
Rear - more off-power grip into corners
More Droop
Front - better on rough surfaces
Rear - better on rough surfaces
