Sooo what would you describe as the ideal way to adjust a coilover? I have HKS Hipermax III on the way in, and they adjust both by compressing the spring with preload(most coilovers) AS WELL AS the lower bracket is adjust, basically shortening and lengthening the shock body.
I wanna know the best approach to set the car up. From what I understand, I heard one thing to do is, compress the spring with as much preload as available, attempting to smash the uppermount down to the bumpstop, then with the coilover on the car, you adjust the lower bracket extending the shock body to the point that the tire of the car ALMOST rubs/bottoms out/touches. Then you lock the lower bracket in place and never touch it again. Then just loosen back up your spring preload, and set it to your desired load - mine is going to be just tighten it with maybe 2 or 3 turns of preload, then that's it.
Using this idea, this basically means that under full compression, your coil will hit the bumpstop before it rubs the tires. What do you think?
What I mean by preload is, most coilovers work by just smashing the spring to whatever height you want, but what this is also doing is 'pre-loading' or already smashing the spring instead of your car taking a corner and making it smash that far down. By preloading your spring, the spring will get progressively (or linearly) stiffer, along with your ride, BUT this also lowers the car. A way to lower the car without making the ride stiffer is a coilover system that has an adjustable lower bracket, that can just shorten or lengthen the shock body, and only use the spring preloading locknut to set what sort of stiffness you want.
As you can see the bottom bracket will spin, then you can lock it in place with the gold locknut. Also, the upper locknut will - wait, epiphany.