Ride height tarmac vs. gravel?

[joelwideqvist]

How much higher (in mm that is) would I have to make the suspension to raise a Peugeot WRC car rallied on gravel vs. the original Tamiya tarmac height?

This is a pic from the Panizzi car in the Turqish rally on gravel


And this is Marcus Grönholms car at a tarmac leg


I saw some faq on lowering the height but I welcome tips on making it higher.

regards
/Joel

[mel79]

I raised the tarmac suspension of the original Tamiya 206 WRC by about 4mm in front and rear. You can see how I did it from a progress thread I wrote.

-Mikko

[MPWR]

Also keep in mind that rally suspension settings are easily changable for specific track conditions. Some gravel or mud stages don't require alot of suspension travel (no 'yumps' and the like), and so when set up for such a run, visually the car might not look much (or sometimes, any?) higher than it would on tarmac tires. The biggest visual difference is of course the gravel tires/wheels instead of the tarmac set. Adding 4mm front and rear sounds like a great place to start- 10cm on the real cars seams realistic- but there is no real 'correct' height for gravel running as the cars are individually tuned for specific stages, and can therefore be higher or lower than this.

Short answer? Do what you want, what's easiest, or what you think will look cool. The Pug (or whichever car your building) will probably run in that configuration at sometime during the race season.

[freakray]

How much the ride height from tarmac to gravel changes is totally dependant on the event in question.
Rougher events mean higher suspension required to offer more wheel travel.

[joelwideqvist]

Ok, guys, I see and get your point. If I take a look at pictures from the Turkish rally which is the one my car acually drove I see a lot of jumps and a lot of pot holes. I also notice from the pictures that the Pug didn't have the lower black piece on the front bumper in Turkey, perhaps another sign of a pretty high setting of the shocks?
/Joel

[freakray]

Here's an idea, why don't you use the Rally NZ Pug kit?
It's already set up with gravel suspension and wheels in the kit

[joelwideqvist]

Originally Posted by freakray

Here's an idea, why don't you use the Rally NZ Pug kit?
It's already set up with gravel suspension and wheels in the kit

Ha ha, Freakray, that's the problem with getting in to rally auto modelling when all you know are bikes... It has already cost me a smaller fortune to get all the gear for a car as close to the references as possible and now it turns out I could have gotten halfway by just starting with another base kit
And with the fact that my idea was to build only one car and then go back to my bikes it feels a bit too challanging to get yut another kit, I could get mislead into building that one as well

Joel
www.onetwelvth.com

[MPWR]

You can't stop at just one. Can't be done (and this website certainly won't help with that!). May as well just give into it now.

[freakray]

There are plenty more liveries for the 206 available from aftermarket decal manufacturers, why not get some for the tarmac kit and order the gravel kit for this project?

[RallyRaider]

You have the pics so let them be your guide. Anything from 2mm to 4mm as a rule of thumb, whatever looks right. Cyprus is a very rough but relatively slow event so a medium height would be the way to go. In comparison for New Zealand the cars use a lowish ride height because the event is smooth and fast. The old Safari on the other hand was both rough and fast therefore the highest clearance was needed.

There are some pics on my web page (click on Kimi below to go there) in the Rovanpera build diary that show how I've gone about raising Pugs in the past. Also may be some in the progress thread for my 2000 NZ car. I agree the best option would be to use the 2002 NZ kit, that is the way I plan to go in future. But that kit wasn't around when I started building gravel 206s! The NZ kit also has the correct 15 inch, 5 stud gravel wheels and tyres with the correct OZ Racing decals, which is probably more important.