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The Pedders SuperCar Saga

13K views 79 replies 19 participants last post by  Eidolon 
#1 ·
... begins! I've drooled over these intermittently since they were announced, and now I have a set sitting in my living room. They arrived safe and unharmed.



It kind of seems a shame to put something this pretty where it won't be seen.





Also, the name suddenly makes a lot more sense. I didn't know it was a race series licensed product. No wonder Pedders is proud of this product!



Installation and tuning will be handled by Petty's Garage in Randleman, NC, named for and owned by The King, Richard Petty himself. I'll be posting up pictures of the installation, as well as a review of my experience with the installation process and friendliness at Petty's. So far I've been more than pleased with my interactions on the phone, and they're even going to lengths to work me in the week after they return from SEMA so I can get these babies on track for the Holiday Laps at VIR! They're going to give me a call early next week to let me know which weekday they can fit me in.

I'll then be posting my opinion of the V8 SuperCars in terms of ride and handling, both on the highway and on the track for the Holiday Laps. Later, once I've gotten an HPDE in on them, I'll post yet more information.

I'm looking forward to the process. Stay tuned to this thread for more!
 
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#46 ·
The install is in progress now! Just after 10 AM and the installer already has both the rears mounted to the subframe and is working on connecting the arms up. He's fast!
 
#47 ·
Exciting!!!
 
#51 ·
I think he's too busy driving around and having fun . no time for pix LOL
 
#52 ·
Actually driving back from Petty's and collapsing exhausted into bed at home for a nap. My body refused to fall asleep early last night to be up early to get out to Greensboro this morning, so while driving home I was desperately in need of coffee. I was also too tired to really push the coilovers. I'm going to have to tweak the coilovers and do some more driving this weekend after the holiday to provide better impressions of performance driving. But... I do have initial impressions, plus many MANY photos, on the way!
 
#53 ·
Sounds like yer getting OLD!!

Lookin forward to hearing about the install!
 
#54 ·
We are standing by. Glad to hear you finally have them on.
 
#55 ·
Alrighty. I've got over a hundred pictures to post of the trip to Petty's, and they're processed and ready for posting. I'll post those in a separate thread entirely, then link to it from here. Since this forum only allows 10 pics per post, it'll take a lot of posts to get them all in.

But I CAN post initial impressions!

On exiting Petty's, I was surprised at how compliant these shocks are. I expected every bump to be a punch in the kidneys, but it was not so. When Pedders says they're smooth and controlled, they're being honest. There's a bit more NVH (noise, vibration, and harshness) from the road, which surprised me, and you still feel harder bumps. But, then, I felt those in the stock setup. Everything else is soaked up. For reference, I rolled out of Petty's with all adjusters, both bump and rebound, set to 15/30.

I cut the corner onto the highway on-ramp hard as I headed home, and the car stuck and stuck HARD. That brief flash of planted cornering was impressive, to say the least.

The additional spring rate also meant that hitting the throttle caused the car to spend less time squatting and more time going, which is a good thing. It improves the immediacy of the power getting to the ground.

On the way way home, they provided a smooth ride, but with one caveat: large bumps in the highway were soaked up quickly and the suspension quickly returned to its steady state, but smaller bumps would hit the front and then rear and set the car to rocking backing and forth for just a few seconds. The best word I can find to describe it is "seesawing". But given North Carolina's roads, this meant I frequently found my headlights bobbing up and down on the back of the car in front of me. It started to get a little tiresome.

This is to be somewhat expected with a higher spring rate, though. It increases the ride frequency of the setup. (A good paper on ride frequency can be found here, and its contents likely explain why Pedders switched to a 12 kg/mm spring on the rear for these shocks.)

This morning I decided to try to stiffen the damping on the rear to see if I could reduce the tendency to seesaw. I discovered that I may unfortunately need to take the car back to Petty's. When the car was in the shop, I was able to adjust the topmost knob on the rear quite easily. This morning, it seemed stuck. I thought maybe something was wrong with the shock, but on wiggling the knob, I got the motion I wanted. It feels like the stem on the adjuster is catching in the hole drilled for it in the mount, so I have to keep fiddling with it to get the adjustment I want. I'll see what I can do before I take it in. (This is the only sore spot, by the way, in an otherwise excellent experience at Petty's, as I'll cover in the other thread once that's up.)

I think I managed to get the rear left set properly, but I'm not sure. Target for both bump and rebound on the rear was 17/30.

On the way in to work this morning, I decided to take the way in that includes both midcorner bumps and actual corners. There's a pretty big one on entry to the first corner, and the car hit it... and the rear end felt like it bucked vertically rather hard, which caused me to lift off the throttle to be cautious. Once I got through that, I gave it more throttle and took the last few transitions, and the car stayed well-planted.

So far, I can say the car definitely stays more planted in corners, and in combination with my BMR sway bars there's very little body roll. In a smooth corner, it feels GOOD.

Mid-corner bumps right now are a bit scary, though, since they seem to cause the tail to want to buck more than did my old Eibach-on-FE3 setup. I'll do some more tweaking on the shocks, see if I can find a setting that reduces it. Paradoxically, I may need to reduce the damping to allow the car to find that motion described in the ride frequency article/doc above. (In fact, talking to my car-nut-knows-a-heckuva-lot-more-than-I-do coworker, that's what he suggested.) So the quest continues!
 
#60 ·
So far, I can say the car definitely stays more planted in corners, and in combination with my BMR sway bars there's very little body roll. In a smooth corner, it feels GOOD.
Nice! :driving:

smaller bumps would hit the front and then rear and set the car to rocking backing and forth for just a few seconds. The best word I can find to describe it is "seesawing". But given North Carolina's roads, this meant I frequently found my headlights bobbing up and down on the back of the car in front of me. It started to get a little tiresome.
I've never really noticed a "seesawing" (aka. back-and-forth motion) when on California roads, but I can tell when the front and rear wheels encounter the bumps... it's two distinct feelings. The only time I've noticed something like what you describe is when on the frost-heave roads around Bettendorf (especially next to the hotel I was staying in). With the right driving speed the frequency in the bumps made the motion quite dramatic.

Mid-corner bumps right now are a bit scary, though, since they seem to cause the tail to want to buck more than did my old Eibach-on-FE3 setup. I'll do some more tweaking on the shocks, see if I can find a setting that reduces it. Paradoxically, I may need to reduce the damping to allow the car to find that motion described in the ride frequency article/doc above. (In fact, talking to my car-nut-knows-a-heckuva-lot-more-than-I-do coworker, that's what he suggested.) So the quest continues!
Fortunately you have two settings to adjust...

There is one dip/bump in particular I drive over that seems to make the rear-end seem to "push-off"... all I can think is the stiff compression on the front shifts weight to the rear (compressing it) then the rear hits the bump (compressing more) then it's the "extra rebound" that I'm feeling more than normal. For this example, I'd likely put in more dampening on the rebound... that should reduce the "pushing-off" feeling. Also, I could have too much dampening on the compression (up font as well)... not allowing for maximum suspension travel. Bringing that back a click or two could help absorb the bump a bit more (minimizing the front-to-back weight transfer).

Now you're making me want to go find some turns with bumps.

-Todd...
 
#56 ·
Alright, let my coworker drive the car. I trust this guy because he's spent a lot more time on-track and tuning and building cars than I have by years. He actually thought well of the car, its handling, and its ride, including the way it takes bumps. So I'm not going to touch it for a while. Instead, I'm going to let myself get used to it. So I'll have further impressions down the road!
 
#57 ·
Installation by Greg at Petty

a little background on Greg

Greg Steadman
General Manager, Petty's Garage

Greg Steadman

Title:General manager
Age:42
Racing credentials:Former competition director and NASCAR crew chief for Petty Enterprises.
Automotive passions:All things Chrysler

Greg Steadman drove Petty's Level Cross transformation from NASCAR race shop to aftermarket powerhouse. As Petty Enterprises' former competition director and No. 43 Dodge crew chef, Steadman applies a whole-vehicle approach to every auto Petty's Garage touches.

Cutting his teeth as a drag racer in Central Florida, Steadman's automotive passions grew alongside his skill. Today he blends racing strategy with streetcar smarts and creates savvy street vehicles optimized for strength, speed, safety and design.

Steadman's understanding of a vehicles suspension is where he really excels. Caster, camber, bumpsteer, suspension travel, static ride height, camber gain, tire deflection, contact patch, compression and rebound are all second nature to him. His ability to tune the suspension of a performance vehicle, be it a racecar to handle the 31° high banks of Daytona at 200MPH or the switch-backs of rural roads, is all second nature to him.

Steadman also has one of the best all around mechanical minds in the business. Decades of building cars from the ground up and fine-tuning them in trackside garages around the country gives Steadman – and Petty's Garage – an edge.
 
#58 ·
Installation by Greg at Petty

a little background on Greg

Greg Steadman
General Manager, Petty's Garage

Greg Steadman

Title:General manager
Age:42
Racing credentials:Former competition director and NASCAR crew chief for Petty Enterprises.
Automotive passions:All things Chrysler
Great guy, friendly, and hopped right in there to wrench on the car with Murph, the guy who put the coilovers on the car. I felt like I couldn't give these guys the respect they really deserve with my limited knowledge of both suspensions and their individual accomplishments. Hopefully they came away as relatively pleased with me as a customer as I was with them as a shop. They fiddled with the car for quite a while getting the height and such set up before driving it over to the shop that handles alignments for them.

I did manage to get a shot of all three of us with the car! That's Greg in the middle, and Murph on the right. Murph alone had some 30 years of experience wrenching on cars from various race series, including spending some time as a crew chief himself, I believe. Here's his bio:

Doug Murph

Title:
Master fabricator
Age:
53
Racing credentials:
Hung bodies for some of NASCAR's most-respected teams, including Petty Enterprises, Bill Davis Racing and Richard Childress Racing. Former shop foreman for Petty Enterprises.
Automotive passions:
All things GM



Given the amount of custom fabrication and quality of work these guys seem to be more than capable of, if I put aftermarket seats in, this will be the shop I go to for installation. :)
 
#59 ·
Sounds awesome, sound like a fantastic group of guys too. They do everything performance and installation wise?

That pic shows a great stance, that js after installation correct?

Can't wait to hear more about what you like and what you don't like and overall opinion. That "seesawing" would have driven me nuts.
 
#64 ·
Posted mine up on ur facebook page.
 
#67 ·
Alright, spent a few hours tonight tinkering with the rear end. The springs in the rear had settled a bit, so it was sitting just a hair lower than I wanted. Fronts were at 26 7/8", rears were at 26 1/2", from ground to fender lip. So the rears were definitely lower. Time to adjust 'em, so up in the air it went.

In order to get the ride height where it was, Petty's had needed to fully bottom out both the height adjustment and spring preload on the rear right, so that spring was nearly unseated by putting the car up. So to adjust the height, I adjusted the spring preload on the rear right to reseat the spring and just used the height adjust on the rear left, which didn't have the same problem with the spring.

I decided to try a turn and a half of adjustment.

The end result is that both springs still sit loosely on the mounts when the car is up, but then easily and fully reseat when the car is back down without popping back into place. I rolled the car back and forth and then measured the height. I'd wanted to aim for 26 3/4" in the rear. What I got with my turn and a half was 26 7/8". At first I thought I might have to put it back up and let it back down and then I realized, right, that meant they were now even with the fronts. I totally planned it that way! Uh huh! So I locked down the canister brackets, called it a successful night, and took it out for a drive. :D

Here's a cell phone shot of the ride height in a random parking lot tonight:


As far as the ride, the additional business due to the higher spring rate will still take some getting used to, but on the highway they are butter, and over bumps they are impressively smooth. Far smoother than I ever would have thought given all the talk about coilovers and harshness. I would say they aren't harsh at all! I think they might even be more supple than my Eibach/FE3 combo. Either that or I'm just weird.

Anyhoo, now to work on the Petty's thread. :)
 
#69 ·
Hey Pete, we found out by setting the pre load to 10mm, it causes the car to sit too high even with the entire height adjustment bottomed out so the most you can do is 5mm. The length in the springs (these were changed with no notice to customers but are 25mm longer than the previous setup) is what is causing us to minimize the amount of preload we can put on them and still attain a desired height.
 
#70 ·
The change was made to increase durability. The coil is longer, but the distance to the bottom if the rear lower mount is not. Before we had 25mm more of exposed thread. It didn't do anything but sit there exposed. The new longer coils moves the lower spring seat down 25mm. 25mm lower spring perch + 25mm longer coil = 0. By moving the lower spring perch down we reduce the side load on the rear shaft seal. The difference in coil rate accounts for a difference in lowest possible ride height of 7mm with 5mm of pre-load. Please measure rim to guard. I'll convert your inches to mm and we can compare numbers. OK?
 
#73 ·
Correct me if I'm wrong, the preload serves to do two things: one, set the position of the bump stop relative to the mount and two, keep the spring tensioned against the mount in case of a full-unload event. I dunno that I could tell you what the measured preload is on my rear end, but thus far I haven't felt an abrupt thump out back that I feel I could attribute to hitting the bump stops, and I know the springs don't unseat when the car is jacked up and the wheels are hanging.

That said, thanks for taking the time to ensure our setups are correct for the longevity of the product and our safety!

The difference in coil rate accounts for a difference in lowest possible ride height of 7mm with 5mm of pre-load. Please measure rim to guard. I'll convert your inches to mm and we can compare numbers. OK?
I just went and measured mine, rim to guard.

Front right = 24 3/8"
Front left = 24 7/16"
Rear left = 24 1/4"
Rear right = 24 1/4"

EDIT: I notice earlier that I said they sit "loosely" on the mounts. I guess I should explain better. The coils do not come loose enough to rotate or need any corrective action on my part to properly seat when the car is lowered. They're still in firm contact on the inboard - facing the differential - side of the mount. The coil does not remain fully seated on the outboard - facing the wheel - side of the mount, however. If pics are needed, I can put the car up and take a few shots.
 
#72 ·
I wasn't complaining and I understand why durability would be an issue with the old springs. I was letting you know the results after my install and you can see first hand through Eidolon's photos the issues we ran into on the rear install. 10mm of preload on the springs causes the height of the car to be raised as well (trust me, I thought I screwed something up when I set the car down and had 4" of clearance between the quarter panel and the top of the tire). I bottomed out the entire assembly and spoke with Rob at WretchedMS for guidance and he recommended to reduce the amount of preload in the springs to reduce the height further.
 
#74 ·
Alright, finally got a few good pics of the stance this morning after Cars and Coffee.






Also, I took a bit of time before an inspection appointment to toy with some of the damping settings.

First thing I tried? Fully soft. Following the info from TireDoc's thread, I set all the dampers to 3 clicks of both bump and rebound and headed out to a quick stretch of road with a few sweeping curves. Not really a driver's road by any means, but enough to let me feel the dampers.

What surprised me was that the car was less "bouncy" with the damping turned all the way down. I should have predicted this, because the lower settings allowed the springs to travel further in soaking up the few bumps I encountered. I'm definitely still learning. But the end result was the car felt downright cushy without a loss of sporting ability. Bumps were soaked up without punishing the cabin, and cranking the wheel left and right in-lane - likely worrying the people behind me! - still proved that the car would change directions quickly, but the low rebound setting allowed the car to roll pretty quickly as well. Mid-corner bumps also affected the car more than before. So although this setting was surprisingly comfortable and smooth, I knew it wouldn't be what I settled on.

I pulled over into the parking lot of a church and pondered what to settle upon, before my mischievous side kicked in. But of COURSE I knew what to try next: fully stiff! I likely wouldn't be able to stand it for long, but I wanted to try it, at least. So I crawled around to all four corners of the car, kindly thanked the gentleman that stopped to ask me if everything was OK, and then got on the road.

Again, a surprise: bumps weren't uncomfortable, but it felt more like small bumps were being forced to be absorbed by the tires, while larger bumps were allowed minimal spring travel. Interestingly, something else I didn't predict, the result wasn't that the dampers transferred the bumps into the car, turning the bigger bumps into a THUD. Rather, the springs were still allowed to absorb the bumps, but the dampers severely restricted their travel. The end result was that the ride was very bouncy, enough to make me chuckle. Cranking left and right on the wheel, however, proved that the rebound stiffness was indeed present, as it felt less like the car was rolling on the suspension and more like it was rolling on its tires! Definitely a setting for the track, given the support this setting provides to the car.

OK, so I knew that the later settings increased the "bounce" of the ride while better supporting the car, while lower settings added suppleness to the ride at the cost of support. So how to compromise? I'd been running at 15 front and 17 rear on both bump and rebound, and it had been just a bit much. So I decided to try just a bit lower, 12 and 15.

Driving down to Hendrick Buick GMC in Cary for my inspection and then back home - I made sure to take one of my favorite roads back even though it required a detour - I felt pretty darn good about this new setting. It's slightly more supple over bumps, yet provides support enough for the street to make taking corners fun. In fact, I think these coilovers have ruined by favorite road for me: the car glides through the turns now, and the only way to get excitement out of them is to take them faster than is safe for public roads. It's a good problem to have, though. In fact, I think the quality of ride the car now possesses finally feels worthy of its original MSRP, and it's far better than a 4000-lb car should seem to be capable of.

But there's still MORE adjustment to be had. I'm currently adjusting both damping and rebound together, keeping their numbers the same. When time allows, I'm going to have to find a good stretch of road and toy with them separately. Having gotten a taste of the handling at the higher damping settings, I might have to find a compromise that ventures back into that territory a smidge. We shall see. The saga continues!
 
#75 ·
I think these coilovers have ruined by favorite road for me: the car glides through the turns now, and the only way to get excitement out of them is to take them faster than is safe for public roads.
I know that feeling all too well... but that's what the track is for. While having the "spirited" nature of a road now diminished was some what disappointing before, I quickly learned to enjoy the drive (rather than just trying to push the limits).

-Todd...
 
#77 ·
Alright, I am happy to report that my first track experience with the SuperCars coilovers will be February 23rd and 24th at VIR with the BMW Car Club! I have just now registered. This promises to be more than the legally allowed amount of fun. :)
 
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