I'm putting a set of used Koni SA on my car tomorrow. I'm wondering what I should set them at to start out. I've had the car almost 4 weeks and Sunday will be my 4th autocross.
The two regions I run do .75 to 1 mile courses and run between 60 and 90 seconds. They aren't really tight like some previous events I've done before.
I've got some crappy mismatched street tires but if I'm going to start running a used set of r888. 255 and 295.
Car is an 02z and bone stock.

The shocks all do about 9.5 sweeps. I thought they were supposed to do 12. What should I start out with front and rear. I will be installing them tomorrow.

Thanks for any help

 

I asked the same question to Sam Strano for a friend who was setting up his SA Koni's and wanted a good starting point.

Sam said "in about the middle of the adjustment range, front and back".

That is what I relayed to my friend and the next weekend he went out an kicked butt...

I'd start with about 4 sweeps, front and back and fine tune from there.


Remember that if you don't have good tires or your tires are mismatched you might want to adjust accordingly. If the tires are crap, go back to this starting point when you get a matched set of tires.

Since you have SA shocks remember what each adjustment does.

If you are having trouble with the car being loose on corner exit (loose when you accelerate) soften the front rebound. If it is tight on corner exit, stiffen the front rebound.

If it is tight on corner entry increase rear rebound, loose on corner entry soften rear rebound.

Make one change at a time, and since you should be close, don't do more than one sweep in each direction at a time.

Mid corner loose or tight is more a function of sway bars than it is shocks. If the car is tight in mid corner you can soften the front bar by slipping one alignment shim between the front bar bracket and the frame to take some preload off of the bar. No more than 1/16 of an inch of shim, but that will soften the front bar if you need to. With Koni's on a Z we found that one shim on the front bar bolt on each side was about right.

All this assumes a serious alignment with max neg camber (-2) in the front, -1.5 degrees in the back. I use a bit of toe in on the street and reset toe to a bit of toe out at the track. My street setting is 1/8 of an inch of total toe in. I rotate the tie rods one turn towards toe out on each side for the track and then reset before I go home.

Have fun.

PS..

Posting this kind of stuff on the Autocross and Roadracing page is a better place than the tech section. You would have had an answer in 20 minutes if you had posted it over there.