Koni(SA) + Zanardi Springs. Your fav city drive stifness please.

[joove]

I had installed the Zanardi springs over the yellow (purple in my case thanks to D'Ecosse) konis a few months back. Since I hava reasonably baselined car (RE010 tires, freshly aligned etc), I have been trying to tune the car to understeer/neutral while trying to achieve stock ride. Didnt want to invest in stiffer bars yet.

Having driven only my NSX, and that too with possibly busted shocks, I am sure I have no idea what the stock ride feels like. Nevertheless, I wanted something that would demonstrate more rear grip on flat turns and not bounce around too much on my commute.

This is what I have found to be the best setting (much much better rear grip. Didnt explore the at-limt over/under behavior as I have no safe place to do so). Doesnt feel like it will understeer though.

About the Konis on Z:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Full soft is way underdamped. Bounces all over and is not very comfortable. The front around 1.75 understeers heavily (with rear around 0.50). Amazing how much difference in ride a fractional stiffness increase makes.

Current Car Setup (non susp)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Tires : OEM RE010
Front Toe : -0.24 deg (total)
Rear Toe : 0.32 deg (total)
Front Camber: -0.4 deg
Rear Camber : -1.5 deg

Pressure: Factory recommended (40 in the rear, front 33 ?)
ARB : OEM

My Current favourite city settings
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Koni Stiffness ( rebound. Turns from Full Soft)
Front: approx 1.25
Rear : approx 0.40

Measuring 0.40 using the dali tool is wishful accuracy. But I think It was close to that.

The ride was nice enough to fool the NSX tech at Los Gatos (who supposedly works on a couple of NSXs every week) into believing that the car was all stock. So I think I am not being delusional here.

I am curious to see what seetings other people have found to be optimal with this particular Koni + Zanardi Combo. I want to try other settings as well and see if some other stiffness setting works equally well or better.

Full soft I was bouncing all over the place. Then I started slowly making it stiffer. Much more in the front as I wanted understeer. Be safe and lame and all that. The bounciness is vastly reduced and my regular off ramps feel delicious. So I stopped at that point.

Many of you probably have third party bars and that will make you go stiffer on the rebound I guess. In any case, if you do have the Koni+Zanardi setup, I would really appreciate a listing of your settings (including tire pressure, tires and alignment settings) as those seem to have a decent impact.

-vamsi

 

[docjohn]

I ran the z-koni settup for almost 3 years and went through two sets of the yellows during that time.My car never felt under damped on full soft.In fact I usualy left them full soft on the street then went full stiff in front and 2 turns on back with comptech sways at the track.Your shocks may be failing.I never bothered having them revalved,they are relativly inexpensive enough to just replace.

 

[joove]

Hmm. I have absolutely no track experience and so I might be off in the accuracy of my observations.

The car was bouncing too much on full soft. Turning the rear to around 0.5 from stiff cured the issue. I naturally assumed that since a damping increase was the cure, the problem should have been one of underdamping. Maybe not.

I bought the shocks from D'Ecosse (unused), He had painted them but never installed them. So they should be brand new when installed. What makes this more confusing is that you probably have stiffer than OEM bars which would require even more damping, right ?

I'll try them on full-soft once again and see what I feel this time..

 

[docjohn]

The swaybars should'nt affect the performance of the shocks that much.The shock is all about the spring it must resist,as well as the weight of the car.Damping or bump on these shocks is not adjustable,it is the rebound we can adjust.You may want to get a ride with another experienced car person to get a second opinion.

 

[MJK]

I've not had mine on long enough to play around with the settings much, but:

Front: half turn from full soft
Rear: Full Soft
CT Sways: middle hole F & R (front drop links reversed)
Stock 94 Alignment
16/17 OEM Yokos at 35F/40R Cold
(Edit have the Type-R bars too FWIW)

No oscillation here, also with Zanardi springs. It does seem like things feel quite a bit better with the rears at 38psi.

Doc, What settings were you running your sways at?

 

[docjohn]

Middle hole front and rear.

 

[joove]

My theory is probably all messed up. But the shock will damp the rebound as well as the compression. I understand that the compression damping is more-or-less fixed (bump) on the SAs.

I take this sharpish turn on an offramp (280/page-mill for bay area folks) and the road is kinda bumpy. On full soft the car does bounce, more so under acceleration. Making the rears 0.5 stiff takes the bumpiness out significantly.

The spring/shock chart at dali's website http://www.daliracing.com/v666-5/catalog/suspension/more_springs_matrix.cfm confuses me even futher as he says that the koni rebound numbers are expected to go "up" as the stiffness setting is increased. Since he measures rebound in meters/s. "Go up" implies rebounds much faster. So it looks like I have actually allowed more rebound.

I think I'll ditch the theory for now and go with varying the settings gradually till I figure out what "feels" best. I'll keep Mark's and the Doc's settings in mind (as I can try those out when I put stiffer bars on).