Composite leafs for the street/solo SWagon?

[Kenny]

Hello birds,
It is that time. I am about to pull the trigger on a set of composite leaf springs for the old wagon. It is in dire need of some love and attention and this is one area I have long wanted to address.
I am at a point in life where diving into full on fabrication of something is not even appealing so I am going the bolt in route with the addition of a track bar setup per Kelvin’s recommendation.
SO??? I am still going to street drive as well as autocross the old 2 box. I am currently running 180lbs springs up front on a adjustable coil sleeve setup. I am torn on which route to go rate and ride height on the rear because I do still street drive the car. Improved handling and ride is the hopes.
So thoughts on rate and drop.
I originally was going to go with a 2” from and 220 lbs rate as those are the rate springs I run up front when I solo. But I am now leaning more toward a 1.5” drop and a 180/190 rate spring.
Note: I am running 18 way QA1 shocks in the rear and an anti roll bar.

I am not sure where there is going to be good balance for those cross country trips and a fun day dodging cones.

I am actually looking forward to this project/upgrade to the wagon and hope to also tackle the disc break conversation.

Sent from my iPhone

[vgwagon]

Personally I would go 220, as long as your dampening is good the ride will still be ok. My s30 is 330 lbs all around and with the matched dampners it rides surprisingly well. Also the lower you go the stiffer you want to go for spring rate usually. 

Sent from my Galaxy

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[Matt Dock]

I have a very similar setup with the composites. For autocross I think they're sufficiently stiff as I have them, but I don't mind a little more compliance with how bad the roads are now. For autocross I don't think they need to be too stiff, and I saw a bigger improvement in keeping the rear planted when I put the sway bar on than when I did either the shocks or the springs. If you're still chasing stiffness in the rear with your setup, you might want to go a little stiffer than I did.

Here's what I'm currently running: 

Front: 

• Coilovers
• 200# springs
• Adjustable Koni Yellows (set to the stiffest rebound)
• 7/8" swaybar

Rear: 

• Composite springs - 200#
• QA1 18 way adjustable (set to 13 of 18)
• FutoFab sway bar

One pain point I still have is the bushings in the shackles for the composite leafs. I have a set of your delrin bushings, but I have yet to get them turned down to fit the ID of the brackets on the composite springs (you can spec them to be the same as the stock springs, but we didn't think that far ahead). 

Best, 

Matt

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[Matt Dock]

I forgot to mention, I went with a 2" drop from stock, but they didn't want to go much lower than that or the springs would flatten too much (or so they said to us). I made up the difference to get where I wanted with really short blocks -- more for looks than performance though.