General Suspension help.

[BlitZ]

Spring Pre-Load - Compressing a spring in advance of adding a load.
Example: Using a 100 pound linear-rate spring, preloaded one-quarter inch, would take twenty-five pounds of force before it would further compress. In effect the spring will not compress until 26 pounds of force were applied. The spring in this instance will only move one-quarter inch when 50 pounds of force were applied, as opposed to the half inch the spring would have normally moved.

its interesting .. the question is : -

if the spring was 30cm high would the force at 30cm be the same if it was already compressed to 25cm...(where are the engineering students)

considering it was linear i thought it would be the same (as suggested its hooke's law)-


EXTRACT from HONDA-TECH

"sounds like both of you are confused about Hooke's law and how a linear spring works. "preload" doesnt affect anything about a springs function. a linear spring exerts the same amount of force from being compressed 0-1" as it does from being previously compressed at 2" to being compressed another 1", basically 2-3". what is effectively changed is the ride height when you adjust the amount the spring is precompressed and the static cornerweights of each wheel. the fancy shocks that allow you to separately preload the spring allows the adjustment of ride hieght independently to cornerweights. "


Also refer to the link u gave... They are talkain about a progressive spring in a coilover... not a linear spring

So basically u cant preload linear