So I finally bought some Koni Yellows. Car has about 78k miles on it, I figured it was time. I was taking the old ones off and found a spring spacer on the right front. I almost sh*t my pants. After that my events, changing my tires a million times, install the Gendron bar, fixing the Gendron bar, fixing the Gendron bar again, I never saw it. One of my techs at work rebuilt the transmission and installed a new clutch. No one ever saw it, amazing. I am thinking that couldn't of been helping the handling, so I am looking forward to the event this weekend.

On a side note, anyone have recommendations on where to set the shocks as a starting point? The drivers rear sure is a pain in the ass.

Thanks,
Colin Fiedler

 

That's funny.

I liked the way the car felt on full dampening all around.... especially in the rear. No wait. Definately in the rear.

They are like half a shock since you can't adjust compression so tuning them is a little weird.

 

Why and I detecting sarcasism? Or are you actually serious when you say full stiff all the way around? (Always hard to tell through the lovely internet....)
-Colin Fiedler

 

I run full stiff in the front and full soft in the rear. This tamed a high speed oversteer condition I was having on initial turn-in.

 

Can your autocross results be protested retroactively for illegal suspension mods?

 

DISCLAIMER: I'm a novice when it comes to suspension tweaking

Do Konis adjust rebound & compression together or rebound only? That makes a big difference in where you want to start from.

Rebound & compression together I would start out at or 1/4 from full stiff and work my way in the softer direction until it felt right to me.

Rebound only I would start about 1/4 from full soft and work my way in the stiff direction.

It's intuitively more simple to adjust all 4 corners at the same time, but when you get that feeling good then you can monkey around with F/R balance.

 

Naw, I'm serious. I fiddled with these shocks for half of a season and there were slightly better than stock in that they slowed the roll of the car. The slaloms will feel considerably better than stock.

Please run full stiff or very close to it in the rear. It will settle down the drama back there. It seems counter-intuitive but it works. We're not talking about compression. We're dealing with rebound. My theory is that on coner entry when the car dives, with a slow rebound, the rear inside shock doesn't let the wheel extend as far in it's travel as much as with a quick rebound. This keeps the car lower over all and when you do get to the steady state and consequential exit part of the turn there will be less "action" going on with the shock since it won't have to use as much travel to get to the compressed state it will be in on exit. You can feel this in the driver seat. When the rear wheels go through their travel, their dynamic toe and camber range is huge and this effects the drive line or direction. Keeping this dynamic in check (slow rebound) keeps things more predictable and calm.

Here's what Jason Saini has observed, "First, we

 

Hmm, interesting.

I've only run one event since installing mine, but from that and the street driving I've done, definetly full stiff or close to it in the front (I was running full stiff bu the parking lot for the Auto-X was particularly bumpy and hilly so I turned it back about a half turn). This really helps the car stay stable when you are turning in, make a world of difference from the softer settings.

Rears though I've been running soft. I haven't run into any problems, but then again in my single auto-x I'm sure I haven't been pushing it that hard, so maybe I'll try out the suggestion to stiffen the rears.

 

Conedodger, I hope not....

Matt, thanks for the advise, I will play around with it this weekend, we have a two event weekend, so it should be fun.

Thanks,
Colin

 

One thing to keep in mind about Koni Sports is that the compression damping does increase when you set the shock to full stiff. At least, that was the case back in the day with the RX-7tt shock dyno plots I saw, and a few other cars. Also, Koni tells you not to run them full stiff, but the Dutch to English translation is kind of poor...something like "the damper can never be fully adjusted" or something like that.

I think that full stiff might cause them to become "blown" faster.

Steve