Has Anyone Read The Adjustable Shock Article in the April CHP?

[Gearhead Dude]

The April issue of Chevy High Performance has an interesting article (p. 40) discussing Alston's Single and Double-adjustable shocks. On an A-Body built for spirited street driving, are they worth the extra budget expense? I've got a set of Edelbrock IAS shocks on now but it's not yet on the road, so I don't know how well they work. I've got Hotchkis springs and swaybar package with aftermarket rear control arms.

[ss dave]

I'll let you know in about a month.
I removed my IAS and replacing them with the DA Varishocks all around.

[Gearhead Dude]

Cool, I'll be very interested to hear your thoughts! While the DAs will be a dramatic improvement over the IAS, did you have any problems with them?

[ss dave]

No, but Iam changing my front and rear suspension.
Got a 69 Camaro vert, removing GW front stuff for ATS spindles, Hotchkiss sprngs, SPC UCA and SC&C LCA, G link rear with DA's all around. Read the article today btw.

[silver69camaro]

I am a firm believe that you should buy the best damper your money can buy; they are hands-down better than off-the-shelf units. They DO make a difference.

[Tom Vogel]

Bump... Well? Whats the verdict?

[rlovell383]

I just installed a set of single adjustables in my 67, replacing KYBS.... It literally transformed the car. No exaggeration. The suspension actually tracks the road now, rather than skipping over the bumps and just being stiff. Highly recommended.

Randy

[buddyholly]

I have run the Varishocks on the front and back for a year now. Had KYB's on before. Neat to be able to adjust them to my needs but not nearly as dramatic a change as I was expecting. I have a problem with the rear Varishocks so I had to switch back to the KYBs and after a few miles I hardly notice a difference. Still running the fronts and I think the front makes the bigger difference.

[Freddiecougar]

I think that Mary Pozzi made a very good case for the effectiveness of good adjustable shocks over the weekend in Costa Mesa. She had good bolt-on parts, then supplimented them with our DA VariShocks. She was running right with (or in front of) cars with much more elaborate and expensive systems. Maybe we could get her to chime in? Mary????
Tim

[Twentyover]

How much is due to the shock, and how much to Mary's madd skillz as a crosser

[JRouche]

Good topic. I am in the process of putting in some shockwaves. They are the same as the varishocks from what I can tell. I have double adjustable. My question is where do you start??

So you have adjustments for both rebound and compression. Do you start off with a midrange setting then move from there. Just one at a time, otherwise you dont know what change made a difference. And I dont see them making that much of a difference really, from click to click. Not that I will notice. Im not a racer or anything, just a street car. But I see them as being made for a street car, they arent really track type shocks. Which makes them perfect for me.

Now spring rates, or even more so, sway bar rates make a dramatic "feel" in the change. But the adjustable shocks, I dont know. Maybe snake oil?? I cant say till I drive it, almost there JR

[Norm Peterson]

Here is a shock tuning guide for Koni double-adjustables that should generally work except for the detailed descriptions concerning how to actually make the adjustments. For street use, you may find that dialing back to slightly less damping than optimum for road-race is preferable.

KONI ADJUSTMENT TUNING GUIDE
Suggested Adjustment Procedures For Road Racing Use

Adjusting The COMPRESSION (Bump) Damping Control
(Very Important to do this FIRST!)
Bump damping controls the unsprung weight of the vehicle (wheels, axles, etc.). It controls the upward movement of the suspension as when hitting a bump in the track. It should not be used to control the downward movement of the vehicle when it encounters dips. Also, it should not be used to control roll or bottoming.
Depending on the vehicle, the ideal bump setting can occur at any point within the adjustment range. This setting will be reached when "side-hop" or "walking" in a bumpy turn is minimal and the ride is not uncomfortably harsh. At any point other than this ideal setting, the "side-hopping" condition will be more pronounced and the ride may be too harsh.
STEP 1: Set all four dampers on minimum bump and minimum rebound settings.
STEP 2: Drive one or two laps to get the feel of the car. Note: When driving the car during the bump adjustment phase, disregard body lean or roll and concentrate solely on how the car feels over bumps. Also, try to notice if the car "walks" or "side-hops" on a rough turn.
STEP 3: Increase bump adjustment clockwise 3 clicks on all four dampers. Drive the car one or two laps. Repeat Step 3 until a point is reached where the car starts to feel hard over bumpy surfaces.
STEP 4: Back off the bump adjustment two clicks. The bump control is now set. Note: The back off point will probably be reached sooner on one end of the vehicle than the other. If this occurs, keep increasing the bump on the soft end until it, too, feels hard. Then back it off 2 clicks. The bump control is now set.

Adjusting the REBOUND Damping Control
Once you have found what you feel to be the best bump setting on all four wheels, you are now ready to proceed with adjusting the rebound. The rebound damping controls the transitional roll (lean) as when entering a turn. It does *not* limit the total amount of roll; it *does* limit how *fast* this total roll angle is achieved. How much the vehicle actually leans is determined by other things such as spring rate, sway bars, roll center, ride heights, etc.
It should be noted that too much rebound on either end of the vehicle will cause an initial loss of lateral acceleration (cornering grip) a that end which will cause the vehicle to oversteer or understeer excessively when entering a turn. Too much rebound control in relation to spring rate will cause a condition known as "jacking down." This is a condition where, after hitting a bump and compressing the spring, the damper does not allow the spring to return to a neutral position before the next bump is encountered. This repeats with each subsequent bump until the car is actually lowered onto the bump stops. Contact with the bump stops causes a drastic increase in roll stiffness. If this condition occurs on the front, the car will understeer; if it occurs on the rear, the car will oversteer.
STEP 1: With rebound set on full soft and the bump control set from your earlier testing, drive the car one of two laps, paying particular attention to how the car rolls when entering a turn.
STEP 2: Increase rebound damping three sweeps (or 3/4 turn) on all four dampers and drive the car one or two laps. Repeat Step 2 until the car enters the turns smoothly (no drastic attitude changes) and without leaning excessively. An increase in the rebound stiffness beyond this point is unnecessary and may result in a loss of cornering power. Note: As with the bump settings, this point will probably be reached at one end of the car before the other.
However, individual drivers may find it desirable to have a car that assumes an oversteering or understeering attitude when entering a turn. This can be easily "dialed-in" using slightly excessive rebound settings at either end.

Norm

[Freddiecougar]

How much is due to the shock, and how much to Mary's madd skillz as a crosser

I'm certainly not trying to steal any credit away from her ability, she is a terrific driver! However, there was a noticable difference in the handling characteristics of her car from when she started Saturday Morning to the time when she made her best laps on Sunday. The front end needed to be tightened up, it was lifting like a drag car when she would get on the throttle leaving a corner, so that was addressed. She needed the back end to step out a little to turn quicker, so we tightened the bump to make it a little tail happy. All in all, it was the whole package that worked, and I believe that the adjustable shocks were an important part of that. If you talk to Mary, ask her opinion, i'm certain that she would have some more to add.
Tim

[claytonisbob]

Thanks for the Koni Adjustment Guide Norm. Thats useful to know regardless of brand of DA's.

[bochnak]

I have the single adj Varishocks up front, stock rear for now. I love the adjustability as 1 click makes a difference.

I'll probably run the re-valved bilstiens for the rear due to funds $$$$.

[JEFFTATE]

The adjustment guide is helpful .
Thanks !

My car has a bit of "side-hop" or "walking" in curves.
Maybe I have the front shocks adjusted too tight ???
Hmmm......

[GetMore]

Adjustable shocks are probably the less expensive way to make sure you have the proper damping for your car.
Actually putting your car on a chassis suspension dyno and getting custom valved shocks tends to cost more.

The ability to adjust for the planned use helps as well, since you can change between street and track settings.

[ProdigyCustoms]

We have run double adjustables on many of our cars for years. Both drab and Pro Touring. Awesome. Simply awesome.

[Twentyover]

I'm certainly not trying to steal any credit away from her ability, she is a terrific driver! However, there was a noticable difference in the handling characteristics of her car from when she started Saturday Morning to the time when she made her best laps on Sunday. The front end needed to be tightened up, it was lifting like a drag car when she would get on the throttle leaving a corner, so that was addressed. She needed the back end to step out a little to turn quicker, so we tightened the bump to make it a little tail happy. All in all, it was the whole package that worked, and I believe that the adjustable shocks were an important part of that. If you talk to Mary, ask her opinion, i'm certain that she would have some more to add.
Tim

Tim-

My comment was not directed to the portion of the comment regarding adjustable shocks, but more toward the comment that she beat more sophisticated setups with a more primative suspension design. A better comparison would be for Mary to have tested the more sophisticated setups with double adjustables in addition to the tuned shock setup she ran. This would factor out differences in skill between the more primative vs more spohisticated designs.

An even better test would have been to run a readily available high performance shock, single adjustables, and double adjustables on two or more course configurations. This would tell guys like me that maybe a single adjustable is say 1 sec faster than high performance shelf dampening, and the double adjustable 1.2 seconds faster then the shelf dampening for a given setup. The use of multiple course configurations would address the variable of course design inadvertently favoring the shelf dampening.

With this data, I could make a more informed decision on whether to spend the incremental money for the single or double adjustables over the shelf shock.

Or I could read the article........


Thinking (dangerous) further, you could set up an orthagnonal array and run a Toguchi mthods DOE to determine what impact each variable had on performance

[David Pozzi]

Mary loved the Varishocks, she started out with a street setting, very soft. Then added more as she went. The DA's give you twice the adjustment but twice the confusion if you don't keep track of how many turns which way on which knob!!! When we got home we found one knob that was quite a bit off... There's something about laying on your back all turned-around to get at those knobs that can make it easy to go wrong.

I like the ability to change settings and reduce body roll or front rise. Some shock mfr's will tell you shocks can't reduce body roll, but if you are starting out with too-soft a shock, the roll can be reduced by stiffer valving, especially under autocross conditions where you do severe left-right turns, and you have plenty of torque multiplication running in 1st gear.
David