From Koni to bilstein. I've seen the light. Thanks vorshlag!

[ArizonaGT]

Seat time, seat time, seat time.

 

[kcbrown]

Seat time, seat time, seat time.

But seat time can be had in any vehicle. It doesn't require any suspension modifications at all.

So I suppose this raises the rather interesting question that I don't recall ever seeing asked:

What suspension setup on the Mustang makes for the most effective learning platform? Which is to say, what setup will make that seat time count the most?

 

[white86hatch]

But seat time can be had in any vehicle. It doesn't require any suspension modifications at all.

So I suppose this raises the rather interesting question that I don't recall ever seeing asked:

What suspension setup on the Mustang makes for the most effective learning platform? Which is to say, what setup will make that seat time count the most?

200tw tires, bilsteins, good brake pads/fluid/lines. And go have fun.

 

[kcbrown]

200tw tires, bilsteins, good brake pads/fluid/lines. And go have fun.

Based on your experience with the Konis versus the Bilsteins in terms of their damping, would you say there's a substantial difference between them in terms of their effects on learning? The Konis have the advantage of giving you knobs to experiment with, and that can be useful for learning, but not if the damper itself somehow gets in the way of you being able to feel what the car is doing.

I know your experience with the reliability of Konis was not a good one, but that shouldn't affect your answer to the above, as long as there was some period of time during which the Konis worked properly.

 

[csamsh]

I would say the most effective learning platform is the one that's best behaved on the worst tires.

Racing coilovers with proper springrates for the tires, adjustable everything, spherical everything, real seat, harness, good brakes, all that. That way you can actually tell what the car is doing, it responds to what you want it to do, and you can feel it when adjustments are made.

The worst tires thing keeps grip levels low so traction events happen at lower speeds. As you master one grip level, keep going up until the tire brand starts with H.

Through the ownership of my car, the setup through which the most could be learned about how it worked was the final setup- AST's, 800# springs, spherical rear end everything, watt's, torsen, all that jazz, on 275 street tires, at an autocross in the rain. I probably learned more about the car in those 200 seconds of autocrossing than I did in the entire previous year.

 

[white86hatch]

Based on your experience with the Konis versus the Bilsteins in terms of their damping, would you say there's a substantial difference between them in terms of their effects on learning? The Konis have the advantage of giving you knobs to experiment with, and that can be useful for learning, but not if the damper itself somehow gets in the way of you being able to feel what the car is doing.

I know your experience with the reliability of Konis was not a good one, but that shouldn't affect your answer to the above, as long as there was some period of time during which the Konis worked properly.

I know what I'll get with the bilsteins every time I get in the car. I think from a pure driving technique stand point the non-adjustable dampers aid in learning how to drive the car. It keeps me from getting distracted and playing with the knobs every run to the point of adversely effecting the handling. Taking out the user error variable on shock tuning has definitely helped me at this point in my driver development. When I start getting into the bump stops consistently when cornering I'll step up spring rates and dampers via coilovers.

I've never said the Koni yellows didn't "work". I only said that for me they were inconsistent and didn't last. I'll take blame for not having them dyno plotted but beyond that the durability issues are on Koni in my opinion.

 

[kcbrown]

I know what I'll get with the bilsteins every time I get in the car. I think from a pure driving technique stand point the non-adjustable dampers aid in learning how to drive the car. It keeps me from getting distracted and playing with the knobs every run to the point of adversely effecting the handling. Taking out the user error variable on shock tuning has definitely helped me at this point in my driver development.

Makes sense. I guess you could get the same effect by having the discipline to not change the adjustable shocks, and just initially set them to something that people with experience say will work well (I did mine based on math and dyno plots, but the end result is close to what Sam Strano would normally recommend).

It sounds like as long as the Konis aren't changing their behavior at a given setting, they should do the job. Then once someone with them gets to the point that they can comfortably start changing the response characteristics through the knobs, they'll be able to. But then, by that time, it might be time for coilovers anyway!

When I start getting into the bump stops consistently when cornering I'll step up spring rates and dampers via coilovers.

What I wonder is: how can you tell that you're in the bump stops? I suppose it's not really something I'm going to have to contend with much because I'm on 280 treadwear tires (Bridgestone S-04 Pole Position) and plan on keeping it that way as long as I'm having fun while driving on them. They're certainly inexpensive enough...

I've never said the Koni yellows didn't "work". I only said that for me they were inconsistent and didn't last.

It's the inconsistency thing that bothers me here. But I guess if you get them dynoed, you can adjust them so they're all about the same, and then at that point it becomes a question of whether or not they'll maintain their damping characteristics.

I'll take blame for not having them dyno plotted but beyond that the durability issues are on Koni in my opinion.

Yeah, the durability question is a big one. I guess the biggest problem with the Konis is that you can't immediately tell if one is blown or not unless you have enough experience to know the difference by feel. Most people probably don't have the kind of precisely calibrated instrumentation (e.g., rear ends ) to tell, so the failure rate of Konis could easily be vastly underreported.

I'd love to ride in a Brembo Mustang with stock spring rates and Bilsteins, just to see how much of a difference there is in the way the damping works between the two.

 

[white86hatch]

Makes sense. I guess you could get the same effect by having the discipline to not change the adjustable shocks, and just initially set them to something that people with experience say will work well (I did mine based on math and dyno plots, but the end result is close to what Sam Strano would normally recommend).

It sounds like as long as the Konis aren't changing their behavior at a given setting, they should do the job. Then once someone with them gets to the point that they can comfortably start changing the response characteristics through the knobs, they'll be able to. But then, by that time, it might be time for coilovers anyway!


What I wonder is: how can you tell that you're in the bump stops? I suppose it's not really something I'm going to have to contend with much because I'm on 280 treadwear tires (Bridgestone S-04 Pole Position) and plan on keeping it that way as long as I'm having fun while driving on them. They're certainly inexpensive enough...


It's the inconsistency thing that bothers me here. But I guess if you get them dynoed, you can adjust them so they're all about the same, and then at that point it becomes a question of whether or not they'll maintain their damping characteristics.


Yeah, the durability question is a big one. I guess the biggest problem with the Konis is that you can't immediately tell if one is blown or not unless you have enough experience to know the difference by feel. Most people probably don't have the kind of precisely calibrated instrumentation (e.g., rear ends ) to tell, so the failure rate of Konis could easily be vastly underreported.

I'd love to ride in a Brembo Mustang with stock spring rates and Bilsteins, just to see how much of a difference there is in the way the damping works between the two.

I didn't have the discipline to leave them alone. So again. That's on me.
I hit the bump stops on my first set of blown yellows on nitto nt555 street tires at an autocross school last year. It basically transferred weight, bottomed out, then skipped through the corner. I've yet to experience that with the bilstein kit on the same tires. I'm guessing once I really learn how to push the car on these Hoosiers I'll experience the same feeling. At that point it'll be a spring rate problem and too a much lesser degree a damper problem. It probably wouldn't be an issue as quickly if I were on 200 tread wear street tires. You also need to remember autocross is generally quite a bit more "violent" in steering input and directional changes than big tracks. Lots of rapid transitions versus steady state corners. One thing I noticed right off the bat with the bilstein dampers is they felt like they reacted to bumps much quicker than the koni dampers did. Might've been a setting issue, might just be the difference in twin tube versus monotube.

 

[jmauld]

What I wonder is: how can you tell that you're in the bump stops?

Several ways.
1) You can sometimes feel the spring rate go to a much higher rate.
2) You can watch video of your car and see if the tire gets pushed to a point where the suspension no longer works.
3) You can put a zip tie around the shaft of the strut, and monitor it to see if it gets pushed to the point where you hit your bumpstops.
4) Use a well placed go-pro to record the suspension.

 

[Norm Peterson]

I would say the most effective learning platform is the one that's best behaved on the worst tires.

Generally agree . . . with the caveat that it is at least possible to have a chassis that's too advanced for the driver regardless of the tires.

Even on the worst reasonable tire choice, the performance will become peakier with things happening more suddenly up around the ultimate limits of grip, and this can be a case of too much too soon. I think it's important to develop a little feel for when one end or the other is about to let go, with some margin remaining against that actually happening, and letting things like camber progressively become less favorable (and grip progressively feeling "less linear") should be part of that at least in the beginning. Linear behavior all the way out to "oops" isn't a newbie-friendly characteristic.

I say 'worst reasonable tire choice' because it's not likely that anybody attempting to improve their skill set as a driver would ever actively choose to learn on something like S or T rated generic all-seasons.


Norm

 

[Norm Peterson]

I know what I'll get with the bilsteins every time I get in the car. I think from a pure driving technique stand point the non-adjustable dampers aid in learning how to drive the car. It keeps me from getting distracted and playing with the knobs every run to the point of adversely effecting the handling. Taking out the user error variable on shock tuning has definitely helped me at this point in my driver development. When I start getting into the bump stops consistently when cornering I'll step up spring rates and dampers via coilovers.

The trick with having adjustable dampers (or sta-bars or relo brackets for that matter) is to make an initial setting and leave the damn things alone until you've got a better idea what you want or need.

That's not to say you have to leave your competition damper settings the same as your street settings, only crank them up to whatever and leave them alone for the duration of the event. A test and tune event is really the place for experimenting with different settings anyway.


Norm

 

[claudermilk]

^^^ Good advice.

What I did when I installed my Koni sports is did some autocrosses with the intent of figuring out the settings. It helped that the track day outfit runs an autocross along with the open track event at Auto Club Speedway--so I had a nice test & tune day there (about 20-ish runs). I did runs ate varying setups just to see how the car reacted: full soft all around, full stiff all around, full stiff/full soft, full soft/full stiff. Then started dialing in where the car seemed happy. I had to run through this a couple of times as I didn't take notes--which was dumb.

Now that I have a basic setting that the car seems reasonably happy with, I'm setting them there & leaving them alone while I work on the driver mod for a while. So I'm at 3/4 turn up from soft for street, then bump it to 1.5 turns from soft for the track--and leave it the hell alone for the day like Norm suggests.

 

[white86hatch]

The trick with having adjustable dampers (or sta-bars or relo brackets for that matter) is to make an initial setting and leave the damn things alone until you've got a better idea what you want or need.

That's not to say you have to leave your competition damper settings the same as your street settings, only crank them up to whatever and leave them alone for the duration of the event. A test and tune event is really the place for experimenting with different settings anyway.


Norm

Totally agree. It took me a while to figure out what bar settings I liked. As for my Koni days I was trying to find the "magic" setting in a 5 run autocross event when I should've just picked one setting and left it alone.

 

[LS1EATINPONY]

I wish I would have known some of this information prior to buying koni struts and shocks for my fox..... Now ill be worried that the stuff is gonna break quickly on it. Especially since it will always be a track car

 

[white86hatch]

I wish I would have known some of this information prior to buying koni struts and shocks for my fox..... Now ill be worried that the stuff is gonna break quickly on it. Especially since it will always be a track car

They could work just fine for you. This thread was intended to share my experience. Nothing else. Though if your budget allows better dampers on your track car is always a plus.

 

[LS1EATINPONY]

unfortunately I got about the best thing ( to my knowledge) for my fox that I could. THe next thing is custom coilovers and I just really dont want to spend $3-4k on a set.

 

[kcbrown]

unfortunately I got about the best thing ( to my knowledge) for my fox that I could. THe next thing is custom coilovers and I just really dont want to spend $3-4k on a set.

The fox body is a completely different platform. The Konis may well be very reliable on it, even if you've lowered it significantly.

I wouldn't sweat it. Koni does have a lifetime warranty to the original purchaser, at least. If it breaks, make them fix it.



(Sent with Tapatalk, so apologies for the lackluster formatting)

 

[Mark Aubele]

I wish I would have known some of this information prior to buying koni struts and shocks for my fox..... Now ill be worried that the stuff is gonna break quickly on it. Especially since it will always be a track car

I really think the blown Koni thing is massively overstated. Have had them on numerous cars without issue. Shocks don't last forever on a race car.

 

[todcp]

I really think the blown Koni thing is massively overstated. Have had them on numerous cars without issue. Shocks don't last forever on a race car.

Agree......

 

[csamsh]

Literally everyone I know personally who has run Konis has blown them. Doesn't seem overblown to me.

....puns....