Thread: b13 Koni red adjustable struts

Ok so I've spent 2 hours searching the old site and reading about koni struts trying to find out what the difference is from "full soft to full hard" as compared to stock or even itself. There's a listing "supposedly" for the AGX's but nothing I've found for Koni as yet. Someone must either know or have discussed this in the past I just can't find it...

What I know or think I know:

Per Steve there's 1.75 turns of adjustment (might be a different strut), by my own testing there's 1.5 turns of adjustment on the strut (I might be an idiot though).

Strut appears to come from the factory set(what I'll call stock) to the middle (3/4 turn travel in each direction)

Turning to the left(clockwise)=softer, right?
turning to the right (counterclockwise)=harder right?
(Note to Koni this would be good information to include in the instructions.)

Most recommendations for pairing with the Hyperco Gen2's seem to be for full hard, 1/4 turn from hard or 1/2 turn from hard. Harder in the back than in the front.

Anyone have any idea how the dampening changes? Is it a big difference, ie hard=2x stock, soft=1/2stock, (a 200% increase soft to hard), or something small like: hard =120%stock, soft=80%stock (a 50% increase in dampening soft to hard).

Koni's instructions suck. What is it with northern european companies Koni and Ikea for instance and their crappy instructions/tech specs?

Thanks for the help.

Go on Koni's website, they have lots of info on there. As far as where to set, it is a person opinion. Start in the middle and go from there.

puttering around koni.com and reading through the faq's there there's little information about the koni red struts. they do clarify which way to turn them to make them harder or softer (something they don't do in the printed instructions I've got.) And say that dampening is a personal choice (gee thanks). And how a colored graph of the koni reds vs koni yellows for dampening capability which looks cool but I don't know if it tells you anything about dampening settings. The do mention that the shocks are supposed to be set full soft from the factory (mine were set to the middle, equal turns to each side)???

What I'm really curious to know is how much does turning the valve actually change the characteristics of the strut. ie how much stiffer is full hard from full soft? If it's a a big number (say 200%) I'll adjust using partial turns, if it's a small number (<50% I'll have to use big turns to even notice the difference.)

Does anyone in the know, know anything about theses struts regarding this?

Someone would need to be able to post shock dynos for both the front and rear if we really wanted to see how the adjustments work.

Example here:

http://farnorthracing.com/autocross_secrets6.html

I have hyperco's on my b14...(300# front/250# rear both progressive rate)...I've been running my fronts and rears at about 1.5 turns from full soft. I was not happy with this setting as the steering felt vague, lots of mushiness up front, and some wander on the freeway, especially when accelerating.

Last week, I set the the fronts to full stiff, and haven't had a chance to stiffen the rears yet. My impressions were that most of the cars problems have been brought into line. Steering feels ok now, noticibly less wander, etc. At the time I was running some all season tires, so there will be some issues right there compared to a summer tire. The best part is that the car rode practically the same on the freeway, and maybe 10% at most more rough on the streets.

In my opinion, the AGX's made a very noticable difference when stiffening the fronts and rears. When I ran AGX's and hyperco's, if I ran the fronts at 2 and the rears at 4-5 lets say, it felt at times underdamped, and the steering felt loose/vague. When I then set the fronts to 3 and the rears to 6-7, the car's steering felt alot more precise, although the car then felt alittle overdamped in the compression department, it rode pretty rough on the streets at times.

With the koni red's, ride quality wise going from 50% to 100% stiff felt very very close to the same, only the steering and stability seemed to improve as well. I believe this is because koni's only adjust rebound. I plan to run the rears at, or near full stiff as well. By the way, it seems on my koni red's that I have about 2.25 turns from full soft to full stiff.

Hope this helps some.
-Bryan

hmmm that would make me think that there's not a whole lot of difference performance wise hard to soft. I was kind of hoping it was a bigger difference than that...

More imput appreciated, especially from those of you running the CSK/hypercoil setup. I've gotten a few pm's about settings already so please keep them coming.

All I know is that when I had AGX's, I kind of used the dampers to set the spring rate on the car, in effect the AGX's could overcome the soft spring rates, and make the car feel like it was super firm, perfect for doing HPDE's. I ran 4 front and 8 in back. It's probably why they didn't last as long .

With the koni's, it's alot more of a refined ride. I rode in veilside's b14 a few weeks ago, and he is running ground controls with 400# front and 350# rear!!! On the street no less. He is also running koni reds. I was shocked on how well the car rode on our test drive. I thought for sure he had about 100# front and rear less. Plus he was riding on some azenis, which don't do alot for comfort do to there stiff sidewalls.

I have some ground controls on order through veilside. I ordered up 350#front/300# rear, based in part on how his car rode. Hopefully they get here soon.


(btw, I live in s.e. portland, and veilside lives near hillsboro/beaverton area)

There could be a decent difference between hard and soft that isin't immediately obvious because the high speed damping isin't insanely jacked up.

Total dampening difference on a B13 Koni red is about 75% soft to hard. So not quite double. He says the adjustment is not linear as well. First turn from soft gets you 20-30% more, 2nd turn gets you to 40-50%. Final half turn gets you to 100%.

Simplifying this on a scale of 10-20.

If 10 is full soft, 17.5 would be full hard (soft + .75 soft).
The first turn gets you to 11.5-12.25. (Probably closer to 11.5 I'd guess)
Turn 2 gets you to 13-13.75. (Probably closer to 13.75 again I'm guessing)
The last half turn gets you to 17.5 or full hard.
If you were to draw a picture graph of this the line is a curve

What I translate this to mean is that there is as much dampening force increase in the final 1/2 turn, as you get in the first 4 half turns (2 full turns), so big turns for the first 2, small adjustments for the last 1/2, (1/8 turn in the final 1/2 is equal to 1/2 turn during the first 2 turns.)

Settings I'm going to try them out full hard to start and back off 1/4 turns till they're too soft then go 1/8 turns back up...