Originally Posted by MaysEffect

Note - You can't have sag without preload...unless you are talking about something else...

I think your examples further establishes my vague point. Droop is a portion of the total damper travel, where as it ISN'T relevant to the total spring length. Sag is however a factor used for springs, not dampers. Thus my point on why these two things need to be matched dependent on weight and length. Using a tender or helper spring ensures there is still some load on a spring at full droop. You are inevitably going to have some preload on the spring in order to measure sag. The differences would be where in the damper stroke the spring starts to compress.

I didn't include an example for it to make sense previously. But in a situation where you have a damper that has 8 inches of extension at full droop, but your spring is only 6 inches long, you have a situation where there is no load on the main spring when it goes passed 6 inches of droop, this would be zero preload. In reality like you said, normal road cars won't see this level of extension during driving where as a extreme off-road truck can work well passed 8 inches of droop from static ride height, but in any case you never want your spring fully extended before the damper fully extends.

Adding a tender/helper or even a secondary main spring is what needs to be done, with your example of off-road vehicles, they are going the route of a secondary rate spring. In the case where a spring rate is significantly stiffer than the total load on said wheel, the spring does not need to be long, but in such case the damper travel is still based off the factory length and available perch adjustments. The complexity of tenders comes from trying to match weights when the damper is extended farther than the spring and trying to manage compression difference's. This is a completely different discussion though.