Sobe_Death

so did they let you know what the stock valving of the Bilsteins were? All of the reviews I have heard have stated that they are overdamped for the springs that come with them.

macr88

They have too much bleed and too much rebound.
I'll post up the dynos at some point.

You can run heavier springs on them but they still have the issue of the bleed so although they'll feel better spring wise the damping will still be more for street comfort.

I ran 650 in front with the bilstein valving and it wasn't bad but it sure wasn't great.

INTJ

Did you get more feel with just the new shock or with the revalve? (Did the revalve offer more compression?)

Overdampened means a lot of things to different people. Like a VW overdampened? Or a Bilstein Sport with 150 lb spring overdampened?

I think the factory shock is overdampened in the rear for compression, but rebound seems soft. That and they have sticktion, and fade on track days.

Does the standard shock pogo with all that rebound?

In terms of stock bleed: Its bump bleed, so is it just for high speed or both low and high? Is it blowoff style or progressive ramp?

macr88

Feel is a very tricky thing when referring to suspension. I felt the knee more on the stock bilstein. The revalved being linear don't really give that knee feeling, the damping starts almost instantly and has a fairly linear rise to it. What I felt was increased traction over the stock bilsteins. The rear went from a bit tail happy with the bilsteins to very tail happy with stock AP1 shocks and understeer with the revalved bilsteins and increased spring rate front and rear.650f 450r the plan is to run 672f and 560r


I'll post up the dyno at some point but the difference is minor by looking at the two but to him it's a big change. To me the change with the car is huge.


Yes it does but think of you think it should be ideal and if it's beyond that point then it's overdamped and if it's below then it's under damped.
Over = too slow
under = too fast
I'm not sure what else you want from this question.


AP2's in my opinion are underdamped throughout the range when hot. They feel like they're digressive, I will eventually have a dyno on them as well as the AP1's.
I think they feel soft in rebound only because compression is too soft. The more you get in to the spring the more control you need, so to say they're underdamped is tricky. The softer you go on compression the more energy is created and needs to be controlled so yes you would need more rebound but it's for the wrong reason. It could make the car better but not as good as having the correct amount of compression.


The standard bilstein pogo's far less than the stock AP2 shocks but are lacking spring rate.
I kind of answered that question above.


The bleed in the bilstein is in reference to the bleed that happens before the shims are active. This is low speed bleed and is just another shim that allows the fluid to freely flow through the piston and shims before the shims start to flex. It makes the ride a bit more comfy.
The revalved shocks are valved with no bleed shims.


This is my thought on this so if you feel anything is wrong please let me know. I'm still learning

INTJ

Your info is really great. You are testing more than just the wild assertions we sometimes get.

Your comments are very clear. I was debating a long time on the KW3 since so much work has gone into them. Great out of the box for DD/Street. I have competed on the basic Koni adj and I really don't like them. I have some Spec R. Bilsteins non-adj. which I like a lot on a dedicated track car. So I'm biased toward monotube in general.

I DD on horrible roads and do a half dozen track days on Star specs. So for that I though this Bilstein was the perfect choice and gave me some latitude to use their new pistons and redline oils.

macr88

What new pistons?
Thanks for the compliment.

The hard part now is figuring out what can be done to make them better.

AyJay

I've got a set of PSS now but I think I'm going to deviate from my original plan of turning them around to Bilstein for a revalve right away.

Now that I've pretty much been eliminated from taking 1st in my AutoX class I'm just going to put the PSS on and run them for the rest of the season. They'll come off again for revalve after the season ends. No rush now. I wanna be able to get some more track days in soon and other activites w/o funneling most of my play funds to coilover hardware.

Speaking of being eliminated, I met a guy named Guy (LoL) at the last autoX event that can pretty much take the Sac STR cup if he wants it enough to keep showing up. He's running custom valved Bilstein PSS and he valves them himself. He also makes his own tophats, sway bars, camber kits, etc. He's willing to make and sell all that stuff to S2k'ers that want it.

He seemed to make a pretty compelling arguement as to why I shouldn't run the OEM tophats because the the spring and shock will not be loaded evenly w/o a bearing at the top. It'll just be crashing into the tophat (paraphrasing). Basically, he said you can run the OEM tophats but it's far from optimal.

AyJay

[QUOTE=Bikey,Jun 3 2010, 05:47 PM]Have you considered the Ground Control top hats?

chetly

That was Guy Ankeny... Multi time National Champ and tuner of a lot of National Championship winning driver and their shocks. He usually tunes Penske's but he was looking for low budget option for the STR crowd, so he bought the Bilsteins and started working. He is pretty fast and there is still tuning left to do in the car.

He talks... I listen. I would suggest the same.


http://ankenyracingenterprises.com/home.htm

AyJay

We're on the same page w/ that... I was all ears... especially after the kinda times he was running.

My job there was to try to ask semi-intellegent questions .

My good friend and I (VROD04 on this forum) have been battling for top spot in STR this year. Guy whupped his co-driver and both of them whupped us leavin us to fight amongst ourselves for 3rd .

Guy mentioned that he was also interested in valving a set of Penskes for himself. And he might have even talked VROD into leaving his HKS Hipermax setup for Bilstein ... but that remains to be seen.