Ohlins DFVs, Dunlop Direzza ZIIs, UK spec alignment
06-14-2013, 03:01 PM
#1
Thread Starter
Ohlins DFVs, Dunlop Direzza ZIIs, UK spec alignment
I just posted this at S2KI Honda S2000 Forums> General Interest> S2000 Modifications and Parts> Ohlins DFV Coliover Kit (Review and DIY) but thought I'd make it easy on y'all and repost it here. Just in case you're curious what I've been up to...
I’m surprised there’s so much interest in the Ohlins DFVs (4 pages to this thread and counting), but so little information from other folks who have actually installed them. Let me add my experience:
Over the winter I installed Ohlins DFVs, Dunlop Direzza ZIIs and aligned everything to UK specs. The verdict? MAGIC!! (The jury's still out when the road gets rough, but I think I'm zeroing in on that as well.)
The installation was straightforward (Thanks Gernby!), but took me a while. I enjoy working on cars and just didn’t want to rush through it. I did a few things different that Gernby did, but they were mostly just because that’s the way I do things.
The biggest difference is that I installed them exactly as they came out of the box from Ohlins. I read their suggested settings, measured everything, realized that they had already set everything up to their suggested specs, and decided that to start with the assumption that the Ohlins engineers knew what they were doing. So I changed nothing. Plenty of time to second guess them and fiddle later.
Two detail differences I did maker were in cutting the rear dust covers and in protecting the adjuster threads. Like Gernby, I wasn’t happy with just cutting the bottom off the dust covers like Ohlins suggested, so instead I carefully cut a section out of the middle and Loctite 401 superglued the top half to the bottom half. You’ll need to look pretty closely to see that it wasn’t manufactured that way in the first place. I also wrapped the exposed adjustment threads with self-fusing silicon Rescue Tape. I had never wrapped the adjuster threads on any of my racecars or motorcycles and the dings of thrown stones never caused a major problem, but I expect my Ohlins to see much longer duty and less frequent attention, so decided a little prevention was in the cards. Except for those two things, I just bolted the dampers into my car as they came from Ohlins.
Despite my best intentions to only make one change at a time, I couldn’t resist the temptation to replace my Continental Extreme Contact DWSs (don’t laugh, that’s what my car had on it when I bought it) for a set of new Dunlop Direzza ZIIs in stock sizes. And finally I had everything aligned to UK specs with me sitting in the driver’s seat and a half a tank of gas on board. I haven’t checked the corner weights yet, but will do that before too long.
(Sidebar: Yes, I did other things to my ’08 NFR base model over the winter, but those three things are the only ones pertinent to this story.)
My first opportunity to try things out was on my motorcycle club’s annual 500 mile rally in mid-May. I dialed in the recommended 10 clicks of adjustment and set out. We covered some of my favorite roads in north central Oregon on a warm dry day and I began to feel things out. I had a passenger who made me promise to behave myself, and for the most part I did. But initial impressions were immediate and positive. Despite spring rates about 2X stock rates the car, if anything, felt less stiff than on the stock springs and dampers. There’s been speculation that the stock setup is under sprung and over damped, and initial impressions confirm that notion. (I had a similar experience on a Honda VFR1200. Stiffer springs, a better damper and reworked forks yielded a better ride.) The other thing that was immediately apparent was how much more composure I had going through familiar corners at familiar speeds. The one negative was how harsh things got when the road got very rough. And some of my favorite roads are not smooth, a universal truth, I suspect. But I arrived home after a day in the saddle with a big, satisfied grin on my face.
Two weeks before the next planned run, a two day 1,000 miler, again with my motorcycle club. I thought a lot about what I might do to eliminate the rough road harshness. Nothing wrong with the tires, nothing in the alignment that’d help, so I wondered about rear springs rates, and wished for adjustable high speed compression damping. But in the end sanity prevailed and I did the only thing that was really available easily to me, I dialed back the damping adjusters by two clicks front and rear
On the 1,000 miler, driving solo, it didn’t take long to feel a significant improvement! On the first day one of the roads was in south central Oregon, between Hwy 97 and Hwy 31, 50 miles of nice 45 mph sweepers. Two of my best motorcycle-riding buddies and I cruised it at 90-95 mph (please don’t tell anyone!) without even beginning to push any boundaries. At dinner that evening the older of the two riders told his son that if he ever needed to take his motorcycle keys away from him in his old age he wanted one of THOSE! That thing just flat hauls! he said... And he’s right.
Bumpy roads are still not what I want them to be, but I think I’m sneaking up on a solution. Part of the issue, I realized, is that my racecars were all mid-engined and I’m used to sitting more centrally and feeling both ends of the car more equally. In the S2 the feeling of the rear dominates. Nothing I’m going to be able to do about that. So next time out I’m going to go a little softer on the rear dampers only and see how it feels. What I really need to do is to find a good representative bumpy road and spend some time testing and playing with the adjustments I have, seeing what happens and hopefully finding the sweet spot. I have hope, and I’m actually pleased that there’s so much range of adjustment in the single adjustable shocks. In my car racing days I used to be known as something of a chassis guru, but I know from experience that even the best can get confused if there are too may adjusters to play with. This is a road car, and I’m happy with the single adjuster I have.
Anything else? Well, yes. It’d be nice if I could make adjustment on the fly as things change from smooth to bumpy, and maybe as they change from fast sweepers to slow curves. And I AM curious how much of a difference each of the three changes I made make. I’ve got a guy who for $80 will set my alignment to any setting I want and will let me sit in the car while he does it. I’ve still got my Continental DWSs mounted up on a second set of wheels (and from my racing days I know what a HUGE difference a set of tires can make). I may someday play with spring rates just to see what effect it has (although with the car riding an inch or so lower than stock you either need stiff springs or skid plates). But am I tempted to put the original coilovers back on the car? Not on your life!
Bottom line, if you can swing the $3k I can’t imagine you’ll be disappointed with the Ohlins DFVs.
Dean
I’m surprised there’s so much interest in the Ohlins DFVs (4 pages to this thread and counting), but so little information from other folks who have actually installed them. Let me add my experience:
Over the winter I installed Ohlins DFVs, Dunlop Direzza ZIIs and aligned everything to UK specs. The verdict? MAGIC!! (The jury's still out when the road gets rough, but I think I'm zeroing in on that as well.)
The installation was straightforward (Thanks Gernby!), but took me a while. I enjoy working on cars and just didn’t want to rush through it. I did a few things different that Gernby did, but they were mostly just because that’s the way I do things.
The biggest difference is that I installed them exactly as they came out of the box from Ohlins. I read their suggested settings, measured everything, realized that they had already set everything up to their suggested specs, and decided that to start with the assumption that the Ohlins engineers knew what they were doing. So I changed nothing. Plenty of time to second guess them and fiddle later.
Two detail differences I did maker were in cutting the rear dust covers and in protecting the adjuster threads. Like Gernby, I wasn’t happy with just cutting the bottom off the dust covers like Ohlins suggested, so instead I carefully cut a section out of the middle and Loctite 401 superglued the top half to the bottom half. You’ll need to look pretty closely to see that it wasn’t manufactured that way in the first place. I also wrapped the exposed adjustment threads with self-fusing silicon Rescue Tape. I had never wrapped the adjuster threads on any of my racecars or motorcycles and the dings of thrown stones never caused a major problem, but I expect my Ohlins to see much longer duty and less frequent attention, so decided a little prevention was in the cards. Except for those two things, I just bolted the dampers into my car as they came from Ohlins.
Despite my best intentions to only make one change at a time, I couldn’t resist the temptation to replace my Continental Extreme Contact DWSs (don’t laugh, that’s what my car had on it when I bought it) for a set of new Dunlop Direzza ZIIs in stock sizes. And finally I had everything aligned to UK specs with me sitting in the driver’s seat and a half a tank of gas on board. I haven’t checked the corner weights yet, but will do that before too long.
(Sidebar: Yes, I did other things to my ’08 NFR base model over the winter, but those three things are the only ones pertinent to this story.)
My first opportunity to try things out was on my motorcycle club’s annual 500 mile rally in mid-May. I dialed in the recommended 10 clicks of adjustment and set out. We covered some of my favorite roads in north central Oregon on a warm dry day and I began to feel things out. I had a passenger who made me promise to behave myself, and for the most part I did. But initial impressions were immediate and positive. Despite spring rates about 2X stock rates the car, if anything, felt less stiff than on the stock springs and dampers. There’s been speculation that the stock setup is under sprung and over damped, and initial impressions confirm that notion. (I had a similar experience on a Honda VFR1200. Stiffer springs, a better damper and reworked forks yielded a better ride.) The other thing that was immediately apparent was how much more composure I had going through familiar corners at familiar speeds. The one negative was how harsh things got when the road got very rough. And some of my favorite roads are not smooth, a universal truth, I suspect. But I arrived home after a day in the saddle with a big, satisfied grin on my face.
Two weeks before the next planned run, a two day 1,000 miler, again with my motorcycle club. I thought a lot about what I might do to eliminate the rough road harshness. Nothing wrong with the tires, nothing in the alignment that’d help, so I wondered about rear springs rates, and wished for adjustable high speed compression damping. But in the end sanity prevailed and I did the only thing that was really available easily to me, I dialed back the damping adjusters by two clicks front and rear
On the 1,000 miler, driving solo, it didn’t take long to feel a significant improvement! On the first day one of the roads was in south central Oregon, between Hwy 97 and Hwy 31, 50 miles of nice 45 mph sweepers. Two of my best motorcycle-riding buddies and I cruised it at 90-95 mph (please don’t tell anyone!) without even beginning to push any boundaries. At dinner that evening the older of the two riders told his son that if he ever needed to take his motorcycle keys away from him in his old age he wanted one of THOSE! That thing just flat hauls! he said... And he’s right.
Bumpy roads are still not what I want them to be, but I think I’m sneaking up on a solution. Part of the issue, I realized, is that my racecars were all mid-engined and I’m used to sitting more centrally and feeling both ends of the car more equally. In the S2 the feeling of the rear dominates. Nothing I’m going to be able to do about that. So next time out I’m going to go a little softer on the rear dampers only and see how it feels. What I really need to do is to find a good representative bumpy road and spend some time testing and playing with the adjustments I have, seeing what happens and hopefully finding the sweet spot. I have hope, and I’m actually pleased that there’s so much range of adjustment in the single adjustable shocks. In my car racing days I used to be known as something of a chassis guru, but I know from experience that even the best can get confused if there are too may adjusters to play with. This is a road car, and I’m happy with the single adjuster I have.
Anything else? Well, yes. It’d be nice if I could make adjustment on the fly as things change from smooth to bumpy, and maybe as they change from fast sweepers to slow curves. And I AM curious how much of a difference each of the three changes I made make. I’ve got a guy who for $80 will set my alignment to any setting I want and will let me sit in the car while he does it. I’ve still got my Continental DWSs mounted up on a second set of wheels (and from my racing days I know what a HUGE difference a set of tires can make). I may someday play with spring rates just to see what effect it has (although with the car riding an inch or so lower than stock you either need stiff springs or skid plates). But am I tempted to put the original coilovers back on the car? Not on your life!
Bottom line, if you can swing the $3k I can’t imagine you’ll be disappointed with the Ohlins DFVs.
Dean
Trending Topics
06-25-2013, 09:25 PM
#8
Thread Starter
Nope. I'm really happy with things just as they are. No reason to do more.
BTW, on the club's drive to Long Beach a week ago I backed off the rear shock adjusters another two clicks and all harshness over bumpy roads simply disappears! Hwy 212 to Astoria is a road I once swore was too rough to enjoy, but this setup changed my mind. These Ohlins are amazing suspenders!
I'll continue to fiddle. But I'm a very happy camper!....
Dean
BTW, on the club's drive to Long Beach a week ago I backed off the rear shock adjusters another two clicks and all harshness over bumpy roads simply disappears! Hwy 212 to Astoria is a road I once swore was too rough to enjoy, but this setup changed my mind. These Ohlins are amazing suspenders!
I'll continue to fiddle. But I'm a very happy camper!....
Dean
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post