Almost everybody knows what your car suspension does right? Well it might be surprising to learn that your car suspension is probably not what you thought it is. It’s much more.
Ask the average motorist what his vehicle suspension does and the answer you’ll get is ride comfort. While ride comfort is important it’s just a small function of car vehicle suspension.
The most important job suspension does? Keeping the wheel in contact with the road.
It’s obvious really, without contact with the road you have no control. No control equals CRASH!
The car you drive could have a very complicated or relatively simple suspension system but they all have the same core common components such as dampers, springs and linkages.
So let’s briefly talk about springs. Suspension springs come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some coil springs are banana shaped, some have pig tail ends, some have thinner wire at the ends and some don’t.
In fact too many variations to list here. Whatever the type fitted suspension springs play a vital role, springs absorb the impacts and imperfections on the road and maintains the vehicle ride height.
Now we get to the dampers, otherwise commonly known as shock absorbers. Like springs they also come in different variations.
The Damper or shock absorber primary function is to absorb the energy from the coil spring. Let’s take a look at the most common shocks fitted today.
Oil shock absorbers – these are very common. A relatively simple, cheap to produce shock absorber filled with oil.
Gas shock absorbers – The biggest misconception about gas shock absorbers is they are filled exclusively with gas. Not true. Every shock absorber has hydraulic oil.
Nitrogen gas is used to pressurize the oil which prevents the oil from foaming, a term called cavitation. This provides a reliable stable shock absorber, big safety improvement over the oil damper which suffers from a noticeable drop in damping force under load.
So with this in mind changing your standard oil shock absorbers for Bilstein B4 gas will improve your vehicle stability, road holding and safety. A worthwhile investment.
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