Stock spring rates confirmed

flatlander937

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'11 Mazda2 Sport
I know there was some speculation as to what stock spring rates for the 2011-2014 Mazda2 actually are.

Well someone asked about it and mine are all off the car(because Eibach springs) so borrowed a friend's corner weighting scales and used a press to at least get a rough idea of the spring rates when tested.

The tests were performed as follows:

Added brake rotors/hubs/etc to have a large flat base on the scale(don't want a coil putting all it's pressure on one point), and also for some safety to "capture" the coil should something start to slip. This was still kind of dangerous and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. I had to have a rag under the front coils to keep them from wanting to tilt over sideways(because they're not perfectly centered as they're meant to be on a strut).

Then the scale was zeroed with the spring and all mounting stuff in place.

At this point I ran the press down about 3 inches to make sure everything seats squarely in place, then let pressure off until there was 1 or 2 lbs of pressure on the spring, and gave it a slight shake to make sure it wouldn't move on me. At this point(with 1-2lbs of force only) I measured the distance from the press centering frame(the beam that runs left to right, and moves downwards with the bottle jack) to the brake rotor. This was the baseline distance. Then I would run it down 1 inch, and record the measured force on the scale, then repeat at 1, 2, 3, and 4 inches. I also tested them at 3.5 inches just because. This whole process probably took an hour or so and it was hot as hell. The readings at 2, 3, and 4 inches turned out to be really consistent so I didn't feel a need for more testing.




Pictures of the testing going on:







So in a nut shell, we can probably ignore the first inch of travel regardless because of testing innaccuracies in mounting(plus in the front the springs are pre-loaded to assemble a strut anyway), and of course some overall accuracy of my eye looking at the tape measure, etc... but overall this is a decent idea of stock spring rates I figured somebody would appreciate.

Ignoring the first inch of travel, this means the stock front springs are approximately 97-98lbs, and the stock rear springs are about 95-96lbs.

I will add the caveat that because I do not have a front strut mount to capture the top and bottom of the front spring like would normally be installed, you can speculate that the effective front rate is probably a bit higher as-installed... perhaps in the 110lb range? I do not have a completely assembled strut to test so I won't really be pursuing this any further, but did want to make it clear there are some testing inaccuracies as I did it.
 
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