Help Me Decide on Stiffer Suspension, Plz?

Just FYI, for those considering going the Koni Yellows route and potentially rebuilding/revalving them:

"I called Koni and they have 3 authorized rebuild centers for guys that want to change the specifications of their kit on a rebuild. So, the answer is yes, you can change the valving. They said you need to basically have an idea of what the intended use is and the spring rate.

Performance Shock - 800.965.5664
Pro Parts - 818.888.8904
True Choice - 888.566.4722

Let me know if you have any other questions.
-JP (Edge Autosport)"

So the short of it is that rebuilding/revalving is an option with both Bilsteins (already known) AND Koni Yellows. Unfortunately, I don't know the price of revalving the Konis, nor the lead time, but one could easily call the three listings to find out this info.

I know Bilsteins are the cat's meow (@neganox, right? ), but Koni Yellows aren't a slouch either. And since revalving Bilsteins cost ~new Koni Yellows AND offers no further adjustment after receiving them back, I'm going to try the Yellows first. Besides the fact that stock OTS Koni Yellows are able to handle up to 600 lbs/in (according to Ground Control - previously posted above). Even if GC's numbers are overly optimistic and not in the Koni's "sweet spot," my 375 front/425 rear spring rates will be much less than this (~33% lower, which is significant), so I'm anticipating a very good balance between DD comfort/tolerability with a strong performance increase in going from 252 lbs/in F/R to 375/425.

More info to come...

 

So, after further consideration, in light of the fact I'm losing 1/2-3/8" of drop up front by keeping stock spring perches on the Koni Yellows, I'm going to to with 6" front springs and 7" rear springs. The lower amount of possible rear drop will actually match the front stock Konis' diminished drop potential pretty well. Also, this will give the rear more suspension articulation and guard better against unseating with both rear wheels drooping. GC said I'll still be able to get 1" of drop all the way around, and that's about the max I'd want anyways. I plan on starting with ~0.75" drop and corner weighting the car from that point to see where I end up. Going with 375/425 F/R spring rates.

 

So this happened today

Now I just gotta save up for the racing suspension/track support shop I used to help me do the setup/corner-weighting/etc. For the local guys, it's Texas Track Works, which you may already know about. I can't say enough good things about them. And they're TCU grads like myself, too... GO FROGS!!!

 

Special delivery today:

Front: 6", designed to work WITH stock perches, 375 lbs/in
Rear: 7", 430 lbs/in
Shocks pre-set 1 full turn from full stiff and GC said to initially set my fronts to 1.25 turns from full stiff. I'm a little confused, because in an email before they told me 1 turn front and 1.25 turns rear. Oh well, I'll let my race-track/auto-x support team guide me in initial settings.

Any recommendations on initial settings, @VTMongoose , @ConeKiller , @phate , @Nliiitend1 ? The thing that confused me was the flip/flop of F/R recommendations that GC stated, LOL. I think it was just human error in quoting me over the phone compared to the email they sent me.

 

I would start at about half a turn from full soft and work your way up. They will be underdamped for sure but then you'll know what that feels like and can feel things smooth out as you add more. I'm running a full turn from full soft right now with mine and they need a touch more. Overall the biggest problem with them so far in my application is that they don't have nearly enough compression damping, but there's nothing I can do about that. Luckily they are only a temporary solution for me.

I have not looked into adjusting the rears yet, which I may need to use. I will be interested to hear what settings you use with those and how you like them. I would rather only install them once.

 

Well, I currently run my front Koni Yellows on 60% stiff on my Swifts (so about 1 full turn from stiff). I don't have any complaints. I actually started at 1 turn from full soft and worked my way up.

GC said they preset the rears to somewhere between 1-1.25 turns from full stiff, and to run the fronts at the other figure (so in other words, 1 turn from full stiff front/1.25 from full stiff rear or 1.25 turns from full stiff front and 1 turn from full stiff rear). I have an email out to them to clarify where exactly they set the rears. I've been thinking about it, and in light of this I think I'm going to start with their recommendations and go from there because it appears that I have a tolerance for greater rebound damping, being at 1 turn from full stiff on my fronts already on 252 lbs/in springs.

I'll let you know. Out of curiosity, Konis can just as easily be revalved as Bilsteins, so why not go that route? The benefit is that you then still have adjustability beyond the revalving too, rather than being at a new, non-adjustable compression/rebound setting.

 

I already have revalved front Bils that do what I want. I would much rather repair them and put them back on than play the revalve lottery with the Koni's like I have with my rear Bilsteins. If I get the rear Bils back from being re-revalved and I don't like them, maybe I'll think about getting the rear Koni's revalved.

 

Straight from GC:

"All Konis are built to a 5% adjustment tolerance. If both Konis are adjusted to the same position, their rebound would be indistinguishable, unless they were run on a shock dyno. The static rebound time, unfortunately wouldn't be able to tell you if the shocks are adjusted identically. We preadjusted your rear shocks to 3/4 turn up from full soft. I would recommend setting the front struts to 1 turn off full stiff.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any additional questions.

Thanks,
Donovan"

So apparently I'll be pretty soft in the rear initially, and about 60% stiff in the front, which IIRC is exactly where I'm already set, haha.

 

So I did a little research on the rear shocks because I only want to adjust mine once before putting them in. First off I ended up readjusting the fronts more and more and right now they're maxed out on the "stiff" side and feels about right actually, other than still being much too soft on the compression side.

I got the dyno graphs for my original Bils, my revalved Bils (both iterations) and compared them to the Koni's. The Koni's are spec'd at 1120 N rebound at 0.33 m/s and full soft, doubling to 2240 N at full stiff (300 N compression if anyone cares). They didn't have any specs for low speed unfortunately.

The stock Bils sit at about 886 N in this region and my revalves both sit at about 3100 in this region (the low speed is quite different though). So based on this I will put the rears at full stiff since it will be closer to the Bils. I trust the guy doing the rear revalve that the valving is appropriate. The car did perform well with the old valving, just had a little too much force on both sides in the low speed region.

 

Good info. You being at 440/500 and me being at 375/430 helps give me a frame of reference. Do you know off the top of your head the full range of Koni adjustability in turns? IIRC, it's 2.5 turns front and 2 turns rear. If so, my initial settings of 1 turn off full stiff front a 3/4 turn off full soft rear sounds about right for DD-ing. Out of curiosity, are those your DD settings, tracking settings, or just how you always will leave them?

 

My fronts seem to have about 2.25 full revolutions of travel. The rears are such a huge pain in the dick to adjust that I can't figure out how many turns they have. At any rate I adjusted them to full stiff already which is pretty simple. What I did was put the shock in a vice, thread a top nut onto the shock, take the slot end of a hammer hammer and with two hands, push the rod down with the slot and turn it clockwise once it's at the bottom until it stops. Of course this was a lengthy process because the shock is pushing against you the whole time.

Edit: Also, I'm at 400/500

 

Yeah, that's exactly why I got B8s for the rear in the first place. Hopefully 3/4 turn in the rear will feel right initially for my driving habits. And our front rates are pretty close. Fortunately, they're easy to adjust.

 

FYI, ended up installing my rears today with the rebound set 90° CCW from full stiff. The shocks basically wouldn't re-extend on full stiff for some reason. Could be an age thing, I don't know how many miles are on these. Maybe the seals are getting a little tired. Although the shafts are pristine.

These rears are really nice. They definitely need a little more rebound, but otherwise they feel really good to me so far. If the fronts had more compression damping, this whole setup would probably be very competitive for being completely OTS and bolt-on (other than needing to grind off the top lip on the fronts' shock body to accommodate the GC adjuster, which is trivial).

 

I've actually seen YouTube vids saying not to run Yellows on full stiff for the exact reason that you mentioned. And supposedly this is true for brand-new Yellows as well, so it basically didn't have anything to do with wear. They were saying to back off just a tad from full stiff. In here it gives a somewhat technical explanation:
http://honda-tech.com/forums/suspension-brakes-54/leaving-koni-yellows-full-stiff-2650337/
I wish I could find that vid again, but it was very apparent that the last little bit at full stiff made them take like easily 10x to rebound than just a little turn off of full stiff.

(Edit: found it - check this out, @VTMongoose )

So where'd you end up again F/R?

 

Fronts are full stiff and rears are 1/4 turn less than full stiff.

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

 

Gotcha; did check out that vid? You may want to back off the fronts 1/8th turn to see if it feels better. That vid is pretty eye-opening.

 

Come to think of it, I did notice the exact same thing with the fronts when they were off the vehicle and turned to full stiff. I had forgotten about that. All I can say is that they feel totally fine on full stiff, in fact they could probably use a touch more rebound. Static rebound times won't really tell you what a shock will do once it's on a dyno anyway. I just thought at the time with my rears that maybe my adjusters had an issue (due to age) and backed off for safety reasons (didn't feel like taking another hour to install/uninstall).

By the way I bought brand new rear shock mounts for my Koni's and man they are really nice and quiet. You should get a pair for yourself. My suspension would be phenomenally comfortable and quiet if it weren't for the front Koni's bottoming out on everything that even remotely resembles a bump.



@Raider damn forum won't post Amazon correctly and won't let me use [ url] to force post it as a url either.

 

Looks like the link works fine to me. So 2 x KYB shock mounts that are ~$16.xx on Prime? Sounds like a good idea. I think I'm still on stockers. I'm hoping that keeping the front strut perches on and the additional ride height this provides will help prevent incessant front bottoming out. We'll see...

 

The front perches probably won't do anything for you. I hate to say it but I'm maxed out on my perches right now (in the "up") direction with my 400 lb/in springs and still sitting about 0.5" below stock ride height. Definitely not ideal for me. I think I'll probably buy 7" springs in the future as the rear has sagged to about the same ride height and this is not acceptable for me, as I have no ability to reasonably corner balance (still part of my plans) like this.

 

Yeah, we'll see. Supposedly I'll be ~1/2" higher, at most, but I don't know if that'd make a difference.
BTW, what bumpstops are you running? I forgot what I got before. I'm pretty sure I'm running GC firm front and rear, trimmed 1" for the 1" drop of my Swift springs.