Blocks Of Wood In Your Susuepnsion?

[JD-33]

Hi all,

I got my 33 gtst two days ago and today I found that there is blocks (i mean like 2" by 3") embedded in between some of my coils in my front suspension?? wtf?

My only guess for this is that is provides a stiffer ride with better handling ? I removed the blocks of wood (3 blocks form each side!!) and now the car sits 1 cm lower at the front..

Anyone heard of wood in springs before? If so is it meant to prevent something bad, or to provide a stiffer susupension setup?

Cheers

-JD

[AMS]

all I can say is wtf

[JD-33]

haha yeah same here man.. im confused as... thats why the only reasoning i have is the jap guy who owned it may not have wanted to pay like $3000 for tein drift springs so he did the shonky...

Any one else have an opinion i would love to hear it..

Cheers

-JD

[R33TOM]

wont the wood break or fall out?

thats some weird shit

[ferni]

Wood blocks in springs is used in some cars pre-delivery... My mate took delivery of a brand new SV6 from holden, and they left the blocks of wood in.

Maybe the previous owner put them in because the ride was to low.... bit dodgy tho.

[JD-33]

na doesnt fall out cause its under pressure when the car is jacked down,, when i jacked it up they were very loose... i could pretty much slip the out with ease .. there were two in my springs and one behind the suspension arm... heaps weird... i am glad i found them early but, because i have to pass rego check within 14 days (ie transfer NSW to ACT) .. the dude at the rego check would have been like WTF R U DOIN MAN U GOT WOOD IN UR SPRINGS U IDIOT .. haha

any way... i would really like to know the reason why they were actually placed in there at all...

-JD

[Big Rizza]

My guess is previous owner chucked them in to increase the ride height on their vehicle, either for legality reasons or for clearing bumps and dodgy driveways...

But still, wtf

[R33TOM]

what ferni said might be correct, the car just got shipped in from japan, they prob forgot to take it out

[JD-33]

Wood blocks in springs is used in some cars pre-delivery... My mate took delivery of a brand new SV6 from holden, and they left the blocks of wood in.

yeah true,, it is fresh off the boat from japan so maybe they placed them in there so the car doesnt jump around as much on the boat (which is possible)..

hrmmmmm

-JD

Edited March 20, 2006 by JD-33

[R33TOM]

well when they strap the cars down they dont want any movement, if suspension is soft it will be harder to strap down, if they make it stiff it will be easier.

just my guess

i dont think the jap's will put blocks of wood in the suspension so it handles better.

i would presume they would be the lsat ppl to do that, performance parts is cheap compare to what we pay

[OZ_Pomy]

the blocks of wood are to increase the cars height to get them onto a truck. Atleast thats what holdens do with their low cars that get sent to hbd i think it is. so maybe yours was blocked up to get up some sort of ramp onto the ship or truck.

[scathing]

My only guess for this is that is provides a stiffer ride with better handling ? I removed the blocks of wood (3 blocks form each side!!) and now the car sits 1 cm lower at the front..

Stiffer suspension does not equate to better handling.

Especially when you're using some dodgy chunk of wood to stop your springs from behaving in the manner the engineers designed.

[R33TOM]

what iLEC is saying also sounds correct

[Silver-Arrowz]

The blocks of wood are there to raise the height of cars. I remember reading about some british car manufactuer doing it to their cars, some old car.... can't remember which one. The reason was that ADR rules changed (headlight had to be above X height) and instead of making proper springs and shocks to meet the rules they stuffed blocks of wood to raise the ride height. Result was it made a crap handling car even "crapper". hahaha!