Performance really isn't the problem. It's durability,and quality. You can't test either of those in a day on a track.
If you have an application and budget for which Koni is the fit, great. If you have an application outside of what the konis are designed for, don't get konis.
In my opinion, the only application for konis is budget-build street class autocross. For literally any other application I want proper spring rates and lowering.
Of course, to get those spring rates, you have to go to coilovers, which eliminate both the Konis and the Bilsteins from the equation.
Yes I know you personally have some strange ideas about modding a car.
More "limited" than "strange", perhaps. Though "strange" probably applies, too.
I think the main difference is that, firstly, I'm not driving competitively, whilst most of you guys are; and secondly, my car is a street car first and foremost in an area that is rather hard on lowered cars. I have hard requirements that most people do not, and lack some requirements that most here have. Competitive driving means you want to get every last ounce of performance out of the car regardless of the compromises required. Noncompetitive driving is about fun and learning. And while you can surely get as much if not more fun and learning from a car with a good set of coilovers, a truly good set of coilovers (AST, MCS, JRI, etc.) will cost you as much as
20 track days worth of seat time. I think you'll have a hard time arguing with a straight face that the coilovers are a substitute for that kind of experience.
And finally, Terry says:
So many folks go down the same route where they do this:
1. Buy lowering springs + twin tubes. Looks bitchin, rides like ass, blows out the struts in 3 months.
2. Upgrade to cheap coilovers. Sits even lower, rides even worse.
3. Then upgrade to GOOD coilovers. Ahh.... now they did it right, and lap times drop. Proper suspension travel, real monotubes, with quality components front to back.
This is literally how 90% of Mustang folks do it - a multi-year journey of pain and spending before they find something good. And what do they always tell us?
"I wish I just would have bought these coilovers from you first!"
What he says above is undoubtedly true. But it ignores something that some might regard as critical. The people he talks about
could not know they made the right choice without going through the journey. You can't properly appreciate the properties of a good coilover system unless you have something to compare it with. And while the stock suspension is always there to be compared with, there's no way to
know that the coilovers are the right answer without experimenting with other options first.
If you never experience the ways a suspension can be wrong, never learn what a suboptimal suspension feels like, how can you possibly truly appreciate what a properly set up suspension does for you? If you start off with something optimal, how can you learn about the various compromises and what they truly imply, particularly if you haven't the seat time to inform you? And if you put coilovers on the car before accumulating significant seat time, how can you learn about the shortcomings you've overcome with the setup? It took quite a few track days before I finally felt the delay in taking a set inherent in the stock suspension, because my control inputs were so slow and deliberate on the track that the car was able to keep up -- except for that one time. If I had gone straight to coilovers before my first track session, that is something I never would have felt at all, and I never would have had the learning experience that comes with it.
That's not to say that I'm encouraging people to go down the longer and more expensive experimental path that Terry talks about in the above. Whether that is the better path to follow or not really depends on what one is after. No, my point is that the path he talks about
does have its upsides, and imparts wisdom that otherwise wouldn't be imparted.
All of these options (Konis, Bilsteins, the various coilovers, etc.) have their place. Not everyone is in a position to drop $3k on a set of truly good coilovers and associated hardware, and not everyone needs to eke out the most performance from their suspension that they can. For the price, as long as you stay within their design limitations, the Konis seem to be at least
decent. The same is surely true of the Bilsteins as well. Both imply the compromise of less-than-optimal-for-the-track spring rates. Regardless, you can get a
bunch of seat time for the price difference between those and coilovers, and while you may well be spending more in the long run (that depends on whether or not you really do wind up going with coilovers in the end), the journey may well be richer in the process.
Everything depends on what you're trying to accomplish.
