Hi Guys,
I will soon be fitting my front coil overs with shocks that are adjustable in both bump and recoil, can anybody give me a good starting point for both these settings?

Thanks

Graeme

 

Ttt

 

I would think it's a guess until you drive it since it depends on spring rate and how the car is driven. I would start with a low setting on compression to first determine if the spring is too hard or soft. Maybe try the mid point for rebound.

Does the shock manufacturer have plots that can be used to establish a baseline?

 

Thanks Dave, as you will have noticed I am a bit of a novice at this having never been able to afford shocks with rebound adjustment before. I will check with the supplier to see if he has plots.

G

 

You probably will not like to read what I feel about adjustable shocks. This is not a new idea for passenger cars. It`s an old one. We have sold nearly all of the major brands including there adjustable styles. The problem, nobody wants to crawl under cars adjusting shocks after once installed, and where do you set them at first? Just go out and buy a top of the line HD shock made for your car and forget about adjustments.

 

with Ironcross 100%, I had single adjustable Koni`s on the car below for years, adjusting all the time but never making much of a difference.....I now have non adjustable "revalved" Bilsteins, it`s just one more thing I DON`T have to mess with.
...redvetracr

 

I have the double adjustable Koni's on my Camaro. Set on the soft, for street , the ride is still very rough. When I autocross the car, I usually go 4 clicks up.

 

The things that make ya go "hmmmmmm." I too like the idea of adjustable shocks; I even like the thought of tinkering with them. I like adjustable shocks (and springs) because in theory I can twist a **** and make my Corvette suitable for taking my girlfriend out on a nice Friday night dinner, without rattling her teeth or causing certain other female discomfort because of a harsh ride. I can also twist that same **** on Saturday morning, stiffen everything up (no pun intended) and kill cones on an autocross course.

Where to start? ... Uhhh ... You got me. I'd have to say put both in the middle and adjust one **** from there.

Gran Turismo 4 (a decently good racing game for the Playstation 2) says this about double adjustable shocks,
"Bound: This adjusts the strength of the shock absorbers as they compress (contract side). If the shock absorbers are too strong when the suspension is compressed, the suspension will be too rigid and the car will bounce."
"Rebound: This adjusts the strength of the shock absorbers as they expand. It is possible to make this much stronger than the contract side. As a rough guide, this should be 2 to 4 times stronger than the contract side."

Take it for what it's worth. GT4 uses a sliding scale from 1-10. On most of my cars I have set the shocks to 3/9 in the front and 2/6 in the rear. How does that relate to the real world? Beats the hell outta me.

I e-mailed VB&P regarding using "eXtreme" Bilstein shocks on the street. In the reply, they told me that the digressive shocks (setup as GT4 says, with the rebound stiffer than the bound) would be extra bouncy if driven on the street.

I am presuming this means that if you setup the shocks with stiffer rebound, that you'll get a harsh street ride. I wonder what the settings are for usual street shocks so as to fight a spring's bounce.

On a different but related note, I heard once that adjustable shocks were originally developed to make them last longer. I guess the idea was to set them to their softest setting and as time wore on each successive harder setting would give 'X' more life (in terms of months or miles) to the shock.