SAU Suspension Tech Night at Heasmans

Justin Fox10/09/2013

The guys at Skylines Australia set up a tech night last Friday night at Heasman Steering & Suspension and I was invited along to have my car up on the alignment machine as a demo car, but truthfully I was there to learn a few things (I was especially keen to see their shock dyno/development rooms upstairs).

Seb and I got there early to be confronted by some pretty serious car porn. A black Aventador (which was in to get lowered!) stole the show. Nico’s Murcielago and NSX were present too and a few very tough GT-R’s as well (I got to sit in the 35, damn… what a machine!).

Dinner (prawns were delicious!) and cold beers were served and the groups of 40 strong were split into 3 smaller groups which throughout the night were directed to 3 presentations: Wheel Alignment, Suspension Design & Theory and Corner Weighting.

Wheel Alignment: We had Chris run us through alignment first. He ran us through the old school alignment bay set-up as well as the new laser set-up, the benefits of both, discussions about race set-ups vs street and tyre wear. Great to know that the laser set-up can detect issues with a chassis, or a subframe out of whack, also interesting to know that they usually give the drivers side front a fraction more camber to suit our roads. PS: Amazingly my alignment on RB26 was still good, even after all these years (and several spinouts on the circuit!).

Suspension Design & Theory: Next up we got an all access pass to go upstairs and check out the suspension development room (excitement!). Paul and Alan ran us through some amazing stuff. The benefits of Monotube designs over Twin Tube, the countless shims and settings they had for fine tuning shocks and after I asked nicely, a demonstration of a shock dyno too (the shock dyno charts made a whole lot more sense after this!).

Paul also mentioned that they do so much development for 4WD’s that Bilstein in Germany have learnt a few things from us Aussies. That’s rad, right?! I tried my best to get Paul to spill the beans on popular and cheap coilovers available on eBay, suggesting that surely within a matter of minutes they could blow one up on their shock dyno and prove to everyone how crap cheap coilovers are… they didn’t bite, and like true gentlemen they refused to bag out on the competition.

Corner Weighting: We then headed back down and Chris took us through corner weighting. Corner weighting takes hours to do as every time you adjust height, you’ve got to get the car to settle before netting accurate results. Chris added a 10mm spacer behind the rear passenger side wheel and that small change alone pushed almost 70kg’s up to the drivers side front. Amazingly, corner weighting is very affordable and its something I’ll most likely look into for the GT-R at some point.

Chris also ran us through the custom fabrication work Heasmans does. The R34 GT-R race car on the corner weighting set-up had a completely custom dash made up to save weight (now that’s finicky work!), custom door cards too. You’ve got to love a “yes” workshop that’s willing to do just about anything you desire to do with your car. Awesome.

Was a great night. Be sure to visit the links below for more info. For more photos from the night, visit this SAU thread.

Photos by SlowNserious Photography
Visit: Heasman Steering & Suspension
Visit: Skylines Australia

More and more Skylines rocked up, as expected!