"Coilovers" for mainly street use - durability of KW V3?

[Sam Strano]

There are some differences between V3 and the XTA's. Obviously the Double adjustable V3's vs. single adjustable XTA's, stainless steel vs. a plated mild steel body as well.

But the XTA's also come with a top mount/camber plate as well where V3's don't. Frankly it's one of the newer, better options out there now for a primary street car if you want coil-overs.

 

[o2sys]

Yea it's closer to their V2

 

[Lucky_13]

I use them on a number of cars. Mostly a few S197's and some Scion/Subaru FT-86. Both are street driven a lot. I put over 20k miles on my set on my FR-S including a hole on I-40 in Gallup, NM that destroyed a tire and two wheels comprehensively. The dampers were just fine.

Meanwhile. I had a customer put maybe 5k on a set of Eibach R2's and a strut blew a week after his 2 years was up. They told him to take a walk. Unimpressed. And if you opt to do a coil-over conversion to the Koni's note the fronts won't retain the warranty. It's obvious when coil-over sleeves are installed and that's not a design parameter for that damper. Rears you'd be ok though. Not that it won't work, just that something to be aware of.

H&R and Bilstein (H&R dampers are Bilstein) are not bad... but I hate not having adjustable damping, and most folks who've had adjustable damping wouldn't opt to skip it.

Hey Sam, I probably could just email you but figured it'd benefit others running the same setup if they saw the answer. My 13 GT's currently got V3's and your sway bars front and rear. Got any recommends for a starting point in terms of damper and bar settings for the track? I ran this past season at middle on both bars, rear close to the recommended settings from KW and front a tick up on compression and dam near full stiff on rebound.

Also, got this email from a KW rep when I asked about spring rates:
"
The working rates for the V3s on the Mustang GT are 343 lbs/in front and 200 lbs/in rear. "

Based on what Terry and others run (450F 175R, 550F 250R), thinking I should bump up the front bar to try to get more roll resistance.

 

[Sam Strano]

Shock damping is not spring rate. If you want more roll stiffness you want to stiffen the front bar.

The thing is not all of us run that much rate. 350 makes me plenty happy in front, I do tend to run a little more rear though. Really depends on what it is you are trying to get done. Not sure I'm clear on that based on what you wrote above.

Damper settings are largely about taste, feel, response and what you like. Can vary with tires, alignment, bar settings, and I don't know any of that in your case but the bars and shocks or how it works.

This is the whole what's the answer to an undefined problem thing that I try to avoid. I need to know what's up first, and what from that setup the car is up to in order to recommend any change.