legacycentral bbs

This gentleman has a ton of experience with suspension. He was an autocross nut, running a DSM. He has this site which has a TON of good info. The link starts at his section on dampeners, which I found to be very eye-opening.

http://farnorthracing.com/autocross_secrets6.html

Yeah I had read that some time before. Interesting info....but there's really not much your average joe user can do about it.

Its true that most people do not have access to a shock dyno. We have one at school here buy thats a pretty rare exception. What it did for me was to be more selective in my choices. Often people are better off with springs and quality struts than some cheap coilovers.

Yes, I read this and left me wanting to buy coilovers that were dyno spec'ed but I can't really find anyone that does that online...

Oh, and basically anything besides Blitstein and Koni is crap...

If you really consider the type of driving that most of us do...I doubt we really need dampers that will act that way.


My new AGX dampers are pretty damn awesome, and seem to be good enough with respect to adjustability

Yeah exactly. It's not like a set of AGXes is the end of the world and you don't really need to worry too much about this stuff unless you're competing nationally. Not that I don't agree with him, it's just some of that stuff doesn't actually matter most of the time.

It's been said that speed is about 70-90% driver and tires, and the rest depends on the car. So really, the difference between the absolute, perfect, best set up suspension and one that's just "pretty good" is going to be very small. Big enough to matter at nationals, but not really any other times. That's why so many people are happy and win events with junk suspension.

I'll still stay away from the JDM stuff and budget coilovers, but I'm perfectly happy with my non-matched, non-adjustable sti struts.

What really gets me is the people who think that if the crank up the damping stiffness it will make their car handle better. Um, no, there's really only one good setting for the springs and conditions. Race teams spend hours and thousands of dollars on simulations and computer modeling to try and find it. Turning your megan racing coilovers to full stiff does not make it a track car.

I actually have a friend who does exactly that. Very nice sti, r-comps, megan track coilovers with 12k/10k rates. For track days they're set to full stiff. Sure the car is flat and turns in immediately, but overall grip is going to suffer, especially over every little bump.

Another guy I know has a Cusco Zero2Es, and is convinced that setting them to full stiff makes for the best handling.

I tried to explain this stuff to the socal impreza guys and it didn't go over well.

Yes...I did some practical testing of that...


I have the new AGXs on my car with Eibach Prokit springs (which are meh)...

On #3 front and #6 rear, it grips much better than on #4 front and #8 rear (max stiffness). I believe this is because the tires are actually allowed to follow the road instead of being dampened so much that they can't respond to any changes.



I think it would be great at full stiffness on a perfectly smooth track...but if any of you have been to Oregon, you know our roads aren't anything like that

^ Exactly what I try to tell people. You should never try to make up for a lack of spring rate with more dampening. All that happens is the car ends up handling worse. Also, having adjustable dampeners so you can be soft on the street and crank it up for racing is a farce. Once the dampeners are set, they are set. No need to change them, because they match the natural frequency of your setup.


He never mentions KYB at all. I can't imagine that they are as bad as some aftermarket brands since they are a major OEM manufacturer.

93forestpearl wrote:You should never try to make up for a lack of spring rate with more dampening.

Except autox in stock class though on a softly sprung car.