I have yet to see what I have on the TXD, but a post made by Jonathan_dyane (who's father owned this TXD) made a comment that he had 16 sphere's put on it and it made the ride softer than the TD ones on before hand.
My question is, what about rear spheres. These are not talked about in any of the posts. All estates had 500 ccm whilst all hatches had 400ccm spheres, I guess this is due to the load carrying capacity of the estate. If the difference between the 500 and 400 is only that there is more gas to compress in a 500 than a 400 (at the same pressure) then the only difference in ride or behavior (at the same suspension height and load/weight) would be the reaction of the sphere to a bump, in that a larger gas volume will compress less over the same bump than a smaller volume (not going into temperatures or anything, so lets say both spheres at the same temp) so even though it has the same spring rate (55 bar pressure dictates this) the rate of change of gas displacement is less as there is more gas to compress, at the peak of the bump, i.e when the wheel is at the top of it's travel, the 500 will be compressed to a lower pressure than the 400 - making it 'feel' more soft and allowing the diaphragm to move more. Mathematically though, in terms of 'spring rate', which is the force (e.g. pressure) required to move the diaphragm a certain distance, both spheres are the same.
So can I fit 500ccm to the rears? Obviously i'm solely thinking about spheres here, the rear struts look smaller than the fronts, and there is less weight here too - unless you're loaded up with luggage/passengers. I suppose estate rear struts or other design aspects must be different to the hatches to accommodate for this, and to allow 500 rears?
I'm getting tired now, and my brain is slowing down. So i'll do more figuring tomorrow, any flaws or bits you don't agree with - shout, I want to understand how these things work. Oh, and physics was always my worst class at school and college, managed to not do any at uni
