I am putting a set of Koni Yellow Sports on my 2002 Cooper. From what I understand the rears must be removed to be adjusted, and I don't want to be removing them on a regular basis. How stiff should the rears be? I am willing to give up ride quality on the street. My first local event is this Sunday, and this will be the only event I run before the National Tour at Walnut Ridge. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Wes

 

Set them full stiff and forget them. Also during the install you are going to need to drill out the spring hat because the Koni shafts are larger in diameter then stock.

 

The shop installing them said to go full stiff as well. What kind of tire pressure would you run. I have Kuhmo 710's and the temperature on Sunday is going to be about 45 degrees

 

Typically I run around 42 front and around 5-10 higher in the rear depending on how well the car is rotating. San Diego tour 2 years ago I ran 42/47 on asphalt. At a place like Atwater which is concrete I usually run 45/60.

 

Any truth to the urban legend of backing it a bit off of full stiff to avoid the siezing?

 

I've heard the same thing about Koni's and running full stiff. But it has nothing to do with siezing.... The adjuster is very linear as you stiffen the shock. But the "problem" is, when you get to the last 1/4 turn, it ramps up and gets a lot stiffer. It doesn't hurt the shock, it's really only a concern if you're adjusting your shocks in 1/4 turn increments. You need to be aware that the last 1/4 turn is going to have a much larger affect than the previous 1/4 turns.

BTW, adjusting the rear shocks isn't that hard:

1. Remove wheel
2. Remove too nuts that hold top of shock to fender well
3. Drop shock down and make desired adjustment.
4. Replace 2 shock nuts
5. Replace wheel

I've heard of people doing this in about 10 minutes. So for an extra 10-20 minutes, you can switch your rear shocks back to soft for driving to work. Once you pull a wheel off and look up in there, you'll be able to see just how easy it is. It might be easier to do both at the same time because by leaving one shock in place, the rear sway bar will work against you as you try and pull the other shock down to make the adjustment. (It's a pretty whimpy sway bar though, so I may be wrong about that)

 

What is a good setting for the fronts?

 

Yeah. I wasn't sure which part of the tale was true and which was disgruntled.

It depends on how you like the car. Generally, assuming the rears are at full or almost full stiff, softer in the front will provide more oversteer, stiffer in the front will deliver more understeer.

If you have time for a test and tune, I'd dial in as much stiffness in the front until it starts to push.

IMHOYMMVETCANDSOON

 

I don't recommend setting them to full stiff, this will give you an extremely stiff ride and you would have a tough time fine tuning the ride adjusting the fronts only. I recommend you start with setting the rears at half stiff. I use their coil-overs, which apparently use the same internals as the yellows, and currently run the rear half-stiff and it rides firm but not too firm...

 

Mine are actually 1/4 turn from full stiff. Everybody I know runs them this way. Even at that setting we still run pressures in the rear of 55-60 pounds to get rotation. Cooldaddy welcome to the conversation, what experience do you base your advice on?

 

when I installed my Koni coil-overs I started with the shocks adjusted to 2/3 firm. I felt the ride was too firm, and when I only softened up the front end just a bit to get more grip it created a noticable damping difference between front and rear which didn't feel right. So I backed off the rears to around 1/2 firm and the ride improved - we've got plenty of bad roads around OKC and running full stiff would beat the ***** out of me & the car...

I need to play with tire pressure to get the front to rotate better though, this thread is a good reminder...

 

You might try running them full stiff some day. Then you can run less rear tire pressure which will give you better braking.

Just an idea....

 

I have no experience with coil-overs, but this is a stock class forum where we cannot use them. We have to compensate for crappy spring rates with out shocks settings. In the stock class world we have to deal with the hand we are delt. All we can change suspension wise to tune our cars is the front bar and shocks.

 

Huh? I am talking about G-stock. What made you think I was talking about coil overs?

 

Sorry Mitch your mouse was quicker then mine. I was responding to cooldaddy. What pressures are you running?

 

Oops! Sorry.

Don't go off of my pressures. My setup up is really different than most because of the special valving I've got in the Leda shocks. The rear shocks are really stiff. That's why I know that stiffening your rear shocks (maxing them out) will cause more oversteer, which means you'll be able to run less pressure in the rear. This should help with your braking and make the car easier to drive because the rear tires will have larger slip angles (softer sidewalls).

Right now I'm running 1/8" rear toe-in and 43 front / 37 rear. Crazy huh?

 

not really.. Even though im running in SM. The suspension with the exception of Camber caster plates in the front is Stock. also im running 03 (stiffer) shocks in the back and 04 shocks (softer valved) in the front. Zero toe in the front with 1/8" in the back. since im running 225/45/15 i run 41 in front and 36 in the rear. With 205/50/15 i was running 45 front /40 rear

 

You running a larger rear sway bar? That would be my guess as to why our pressures and rear toe are similar.

 

yeppers. That and i like running the car real real loose as shown in these pixs (yes i like posting these)

 

It is not all that far off. I betting that your rear shock valving is much stiffer then my OTS Koni's. I'm also fighting too much rear camber, curently about -1.8 each side. Next alignment I'm going to look for about -1.0.