Which setting for shocks - Installing Steeda Adj ProAction + GT350R Springs

[Dominant1]

Mine are at full soft as the steeda sport linear springs are pretty firm but i like the firm ride !!!

Sponsored

 

[jbailer]

Because making a properly precise shock adjuster is not something anyone has even come close to figuring out at this price point. The variances are hilariously bad on every big name until you are shelling out for Penske, Moton, etc. NO ONE has a precise adjustability at this price. Nor Koni, not Bilstein, and certainly not whoever makes the steeda shocks (I believe KYB)

Here's your new bible:

http://farnorthracing.com/autocross_secrets18.html

Although an informative article, I think the guy is a little full of himself and over generalizes things. He talks about things like they are all a constant, I'm guessing he has never had any experience in quality control although that is exactly what he is talking about. A quick example is the Koni yellows, he says, "the last half to full turn to full soft does nothing". I can tell you for a fact without a dyno that couldn't be further from the truth. That 1/2 turn from full soft makes a HUGE difference and I've heard that from several people now. Even to the point people talk about making adjustments there in 1/8 turn increments.

Good info, yes. Bible, no. It was a good read though. He clearly has a lot of information, just not as much as he claims or thinks. Maybe why Koni wouldn't work with him?

 

[wildcatgoal]

I asked Steeda why they didn't go with a "click type" adjustment on their Pro-Action adjustables (shortly after realizing how, I'll freely admit, annoying it is to change the rear shock adjustment). For one, in order to do so and it actually be accurate it is prohibitively expensive. Secondly, click adjustment is not as accurate as the click will make you think, even on some relatively expensive coilovers and especially the cheap stuff. Steeda has done over the years a bunch of testing and found this to be the case (in a reliable, repeatable over time package) excepting high dollar valve adjustment solutions. Eventually I suspect Steeda will come out with a high-dollar coilover with click adjustment. Anywho, the Steeda shocks are Koni with different (IMHO, better) valving and a much less yellow paint job. That's it. Made in the same place. The adjustment is not going to point the hubble telescope to the farthest inhabited planet, but it does have bandwidth across the entire adjustment range excepting the softest and hardest setting, which you should never leave any adjustable shock at - you should go full soft or hard and then turn off that just a smidge - good practice.

 

[valentinoamoro]

Great input. I installed the GT350R springs, shock mounts, camber plates and proaction adjustables.
Install was easy. Bud and I did it in 4.30 hours.

Fronts I had at 1.5 from full soft, rear at 1.25 turns. No alignment yet (will do it this week - want the system to settle a bit).

First impression - honestly, the improvements are tremendous. I'll share more in a detailed mail once I get more miles in.

 

[PatrickGT]

Although an informative article, I think the guy is a little full of himself and over generalizes things. He talks about things like they are all a constant, I'm guessing he has never had any experience in quality control although that is exactly what he is talking about. A quick example is the Koni yellows, he says, "the last half to full turn to full soft does nothing". I can tell you for a fact without a dyno that couldn't be further from the truth. That 1/2 turn from full soft makes a HUGE difference and I've heard that from several people now. Even to the point people talk about making adjustments there in 1/8 turn increments.

Good info, yes. Bible, no. It was a good read though. He clearly has a lot of information, just not as much as he claims or thinks. Maybe why Koni wouldn't work with him?

The article actually goes more into depth than just that line, and provides multiple shock dyno plots to prove the point.

I get you though, but if you pay attention to the underlying message what he is actually saying is that there is no consistency and your feelings vs. his findings would actually help support this.

The guy is a professional suspension designer, an expert in his field, and has built suspensions for multiple professional race teams. I'm not sure how much of that anyone else here has done that we could deny his findings. I'll also note that Steeda are staying quiet on this.

 

[PatrickGT]

I asked Steeda why they didn't go with a "click type" adjustment on their Pro-Action adjustables (shortly after realizing how, I'll freely admit, annoying it is to change the rear shock adjustment). For one, in order to do so and it actually be accurate it is prohibitively expensive. Secondly, click adjustment is not as accurate as the click will make you think, even on some relatively expensive coilovers and especially the cheap stuff. Steeda has done over the years a bunch of testing and found this to be the case (in a reliable, repeatable over time package) excepting high dollar valve adjustment solutions. Eventually I suspect Steeda will come out with a high-dollar coilover with click adjustment. Anywho, the Steeda shocks are Koni with different (IMHO, better) valving and a much less yellow paint job. That's it. Made in the same place. The adjustment is not going to point the hubble telescope to the farthest inhabited planet, but it does have bandwidth across the entire adjustment range excepting the softest and hardest setting, which you should never leave any adjustable shock at - you should go full soft or hard and then turn off that just a smidge - good practice.

This is essentially what I am saying, and what the supporting evidence I am posting says.

They aren't matched from the factory, they won't be matched on your car. They will be close enough for street work, which is fine and I believe the intent of the product. My initial reply was specific to the adjustability theory suggested, which isn't an accurate way to get the desired results.

 

[wildcatgoal]

No, they are not matched from the factory. You aren't paying for that with Steeda or Koni dampers. You won't notice, either, unless you are a seasoned race car driver.

As for Steeda being "quiet"... they don't need to say a thing. The praise of these things speaks for itself. And I doubt they're going to post their proprietary valving. Haven't seen that for our Koni shocks from Koni. Him saying anyone that won't post it is coming from a guy who doesn't make or need a set of affordable dampers for the masses. It'd be nice, but... for what? To criticize in another internet article? I've been in a car with Koni Yellows and Steeda Ultralite springs same time I had Steeda Pro-Action and Steeda Ultralite springs... there's a difference.

As far as I read, this guy says Koni Yellows (Steeda Pro-Actions, different valving) are actually pretty good. For the price you're paying... I mean... be happy. I am.

 

[PatrickGT]

Right...


And I'm not asking for Steeda's "proprietary" valving. I don't think anyone is, or has?

I believe there is a difference. I believe the Steeda products are good products (I have several of their products on my personal vehicle), and I believe the KONI product is a good product as well.

Not a single bit of that has changed from my initial post through to now. As far as knowing the damping force rates and having that published... it only helps to match to spring rates and doesn't hurt their business, so I don't really see a negative. It's just going to help the customer out, and more than likely it will show that they did a ton of work to match the valving to their springs (and likely others, and this is critical with our high rate rears...). It would actually likely end up being a good thing, let's not be such skeptics. I mean, we all clamor for spring rates and bushing info... this just another notch in that tuning tool belt.

And again, none of this was under discussion lol *I WAS ONLY TALKING ABOUT THE ADJUSTMENT FROM THE VERY BEGINNING* What that man says in his articles are his words, though he is an expert and does provide supporting evidence (which would be nice from the manufacturers as well).

 

[DG]

Although an informative article, I think the guy is a little full of himself and over generalizes things.

Hi there! Far North Racing here!

One of the cool things about having a racing history is that you have friends everywhere, and some of them are nice enough to alert you when you become the subject of discussion.

"Full of himself"... well... it isn't like I've never heard that before. And yet, I always find that strange, because it seems like half of A2W is me saying about how you canh't just take my word (or anyone else's word) as gospel, and you MUST MUST MUST test for yourself. I've never figured out how "I might be full of shit so make sure you test this yourself" comes over as "full of myself"... but there you are.

Now as it happens, to date, nobody has tested anything and come back with proof that I got it wrong, or that things have changed since I wrote A2W. It is far more common to have people come back with supporting evidence that backs up what I wrote. Given the amount of research and raw measurements that went into A2W, that's what I expected.

As for overgeneralizing... A2W has to boil down some pretty advanced stuff into general rules of thumb and easily digested explanations. When you sacrifice precision for accessibility, you wind up glossing over some of the nuances.

The good news is that none of those nuances are particularly important. Follow the rules of thumb, and you are 80-90% of the way to optimum. The gains found in what remains are pretty small, and usually lost in the noise of driver variation. Sometimes perfect is the enemy of good enough.

He talks about things like they are all a constant, I'm guessing he has never had any experience in quality control although that is exactly what he is talking about.

About a thousand different parts designed, tested, and manufactured, with constant feedback from customers and our own research... so.. yes?

Not sure what your point is?

A quick example is the Koni yellows, he says, "the last half to full turn to full soft does nothing". I can tell you for a fact without a dyno that couldn't be further from the truth.

OK, war story time. Helmets on everyone!

I wasn't always a shock engineer, nor did I have any particular desire to become one. Basically, it took Carroll Smith (yes, *that* Carroll Smith) smacking me upside the head and calling me an idiot for *not* doing the stuff I wound up doing post Smith-slap to get me moving. Like 99% of everyone else out there, I took the claims of the manufacturers and my fellow racers at face value. Why wouldn't I? Some of those cats had been racing for *decades*! *Of course* they knew more than me!

I had a set of custom stocks made by a short-lived company called ShockTek. Nice guy. Meant well. Was blending Bilstein and Penske (Fox) parts with his own custome-machined bits to make OEM fitment double adjustables with remote reservoirs. Cool stuff. Heart was in the right place and his ideas were sound, but his manufacturing process and QA wasn't up to the job.

Anyway, I was UTTERLY CONVINCED that the compression settings on my remote reservoir shocks had an effect on handling. I *routinely* made a run, and moved adjusters up/down a click, and made another run, and noted the "changes". There was *no way on earth* that I could have been convinced that those adjusters did anything other than what I expected them to do.

Then Carroll called me an idiot and told me to dyno them. And when I dynoed them, I discovered that the settings that I *routinely* used as a tuning tool DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING - and then I took the shocks apart and discovered why. Once you see how the adjuster works.... the light bulb came on and I believed the dyno. *Of course* it did nothing - the way it was designed, it never had a hope in hell of doing what I thought it did.

And I got a very powerful lesson on the strength of self-delusion and placebo effect.

I stopped listening to my butt-dyno, hung all kinds of sensors on the car, and started listening to the sensors - and we *immediately* started winning races.

That 1/2 turn from full soft makes a HUGE difference and I've heard that from several people now. Even to the point people talk about making adjustments there in 1/8 turn increments.

Although it is *possible* that Koni has changed the internal mechanism - so I might be full of shit and you should test it yourself - if the Koni Yellow mechanism is still the same as those I tested, that is *not happening* and you are seeing placebo effect. In and around full hard, yes, very tiny changes to adjuster opening makes large force changes (to the point where hysteresis in the adjuster and the difficulty of being precise enough with the angular change on the knob makes it next to impossible to hit the same force repeatedly) As you get to the midrange, there is still decent control authority and the shock is no longer as sensitive to tiny changes in knob position - that range is usable. But as you continue to back the knob out, you run out of control authority and nothing else happens - even though the knob will still keep turning.

I *completely* believe you when you say you can feel a difference in that range, because Brother, I was there too. But unless you have a dyno trace that proves it... it ain't happening.

Maybe why Koni wouldn't work with him?

Koni doesn't want 3rd party shock tuners. They had some bad experiences with Super Tunas making "custom" Konis and angry customers blaming Koni for the problems. I totally got that and did not hold it against them. Me & Lee got along just fine.

Bilstein and Penske absolutely would work with me. Both outfits were awesome. I was an approved Penske rebuilder, for a while....

Koni makes a product to fit a price point, and their product is *leaps and bounds* better than all the other low-price-point "shocks" (BC, Megan, JIC, etc etc etc) But the tradeoff at that price point is that the adjuster is limited and the shocks do not match off the self (unless you get lucky). We sold kits based on Koni parts - we just bought in bulk, and dynoed everything, and then paired up matching parts.

And I doubt they're going to post their proprietary valving.

Ain't no such thing. "Proprietary valving" is a HUGE Super Tuna red flag (and I note that Steeda doesn't seem to be making any such claim) because unless you are on the same natural frequencies, your valving is specific to you. Change the driver from Matt Braun (130 lbs soaking wet) to Sam Strano (significantly north of that last time I saw him) and the valving changes. Lighter wheels? Valving changes. etc etc.

asked Steeda why they didn't go with a "click type" adjustment on their Pro-Action adjustables (shortly after realizing how, I'll freely admit, annoying it is to change the rear shock adjustment). For one, in order to do so and it actually be accurate it is prohibitively expensive. Secondly, click adjustment is not as accurate as the click will make you think, even on some relatively expensive coilovers and especially the cheap stuff. Steeda has done over the years a bunch of testing and found this to be the case (in a reliable, repeatable over time package) excepting high dollar valve adjustment solutions.

Steeda is right. I tested shocks with click-adjusters that produced different forces at a given number depending on which direction you approached it from. So if you wanted setting "3", going 1-2-3 produced a different result than going 5-4-3.

In the useful adjustment range, Koni shocks are immune to this. Near full hard, this is a real problem on a Koni. Near full soft, the knob isn't doing anything anyway so you can be off by 180 degrees and it'll still match.

If anybody has any questions, feel free to ask.

 

[mnmike59]

Thanks Dennis!! Your website is a valuable tool for sure. I'm sure glad you chimed in!

 

[wildcatgoal]

Ain't no such thing. "Proprietary valving" is a HUGE Super Tuna red flag (and I note that Steeda doesn't seem to be making any such claim) because unless you are on the same natural frequencies, your valving is specific to you. Change the driver from Matt Braun (130 lbs soaking wet) to Sam Strano (significantly north of that last time I saw him) and the valving changes. Lighter wheels? Valving changes. etc etc.

Steeda's Koni-based dampers are manufactured with different valving than Koni Yellows. That is what I meant by "proprietary valving". Perhaps I used the wrong terminology- the affect of or on valving due to turning a knob too fast or sitting in the driver vs. passenger seat on a Tuesday or the big chrome spinner rims I have on to impress the ladies was not inclusive in that point. I did not mean some kind of alien technology that defies the laws of physics.

And, no, I really just don't see Steeda posting specifically what their Pro-Action shocks are manufactured with. Not because they are lying.
I'm probably one of the few people who's been in a Koni Yellow and Steeda Pro-Action car back to back with the same springs and general suspension/chassis modifications. No, they don't post it because of companies like SR Performance, who already copied their camber arms, BMR's lockout kit, a respected watts link setup from (can't remember who), and mysteriously are now offering coilovers having not spent a dime in R&D on it (because if they did they'd not suck so bad). But much more so because 99% of people wouldn't know what to do with that information and it could lead them down the wrong path (as evidenced here... even factual information throws people for a loop and misinformation is then spewed out onto the internet). If you have a question about whether a spring will work with Steeda's dampers, talk to [MENTION=25806]SteedaTech[/MENTION]. He'll tell you to go buy a Penske coilover painted in BMR red if that's what you really need.

Steeda has a shock dyno, a race car driver or two or three, and tests their products - for their market and their own racing persuits - using sensors hanging off the car, too (but in the end track times matter, right). That's one of the ways the dual rate springs were refined. Fact is, Steeda's Pro-Action dampers, just like Koni Yellows, are made to suit a wide range of drivers more than sufficiently in a range of settings, including street and track, supporting a range of spring rates (from stock up to 1400 in the rear, from stock to 450 up front; and I'm talking spring rate, not wheel rate). They are probably not going to be the damper of choice for a guy like you or any actual race car driver, although Steeda does race SCCA Majors with dampers with this exact valving. Fundamentally, though, they are a damper designed to be affordable and reliable that vastly improves the car's performance, allowing the driver, if he/she so chooses, to continue to develop toward reaching and handling the cars significantly raised limits as they develop as a driver (like me). Or, quite honestly, someone who is sick and tired of Ford's own OEM damper design which makes the car bouncy as sin unnecessarily. A more narrowly-focused and advanced design gets real expensive, real fast... but won't make the driver a good driver.

The smallest adjustment I'd ever tell someone to do on a Koni shock is a half-turn increments. I also tell people to go full soft first then full hard second to perceive the difference for themselves (but not set the adjuster bottomed at the end of its soft or hard range). And if someone posts up saying they are mad they can't hear a click or can't get it exactly the same on each side of the car, I think to myself "buddy, you aren't going to notice the difference anyway... so relax and go drive".

 

[PatrickGT]

Hi there! Far North Racing here!

One of the cool things about having a racing history is that you have friends everywhere, and some of them are nice enough to alert you when you become the subject of discussion.

"Full of himself"... well... it isn't like I've never heard that before. And yet, I always find that strange, because it seems like half of A2W is me saying about how you canh't just take my word (or anyone else's word) as gospel, and you MUST MUST MUST test for yourself. I've never figured out how "I might be full of shit so make sure you test this yourself" comes over as "full of myself"... but there you are.

Now as it happens, to date, nobody has tested anything and come back with proof that I got it wrong, or that things have changed since I wrote A2W. It is far more common to have people come back with supporting evidence that backs up what I wrote. Given the amount of research and raw measurements that went into A2W, that's what I expected.

As for overgeneralizing... A2W has to boil down some pretty advanced stuff into general rules of thumb and easily digested explanations. When you sacrifice precision for accessibility, you wind up glossing over some of the nuances.

The good news is that none of those nuances are particularly important. Follow the rules of thumb, and you are 80-90% of the way to optimum. The gains found in what remains are pretty small, and usually lost in the noise of driver variation. Sometimes perfect is the enemy of good enough.



About a thousand different parts designed, tested, and manufactured, with constant feedback from customers and our own research... so.. yes?

Not sure what your point is?



OK, war story time. Helmets on everyone!

I wasn't always a shock engineer, nor did I have any particular desire to become one. Basically, it took Carroll Smith (yes, *that* Carroll Smith) smacking me upside the head and calling me an idiot for *not* doing the stuff I wound up doing post Smith-slap to get me moving. Like 99% of everyone else out there, I took the claims of the manufacturers and my fellow racers at face value. Why wouldn't I? Some of those cats had been racing for *decades*! *Of course* they knew more than me!

I had a set of custom stocks made by a short-lived company called ShockTek. Nice guy. Meant well. Was blending Bilstein and Penske (Fox) parts with his own custome-machined bits to make OEM fitment double adjustables with remote reservoirs. Cool stuff. Heart was in the right place and his ideas were sound, but his manufacturing process and QA wasn't up to the job.

Anyway, I was UTTERLY CONVINCED that the compression settings on my remote reservoir shocks had an effect on handling. I *routinely* made a run, and moved adjusters up/down a click, and made another run, and noted the "changes". There was *no way on earth* that I could have been convinced that those adjusters did anything other than what I expected them to do.

Then Carroll called me an idiot and told me to dyno them. And when I dynoed them, I discovered that the settings that I *routinely* used as a tuning tool DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING - and then I took the shocks apart and discovered why. Once you see how the adjuster works.... the light bulb came on and I believed the dyno. *Of course* it did nothing - the way it was designed, it never had a hope in hell of doing what I thought it did.

And I got a very powerful lesson on the strength of self-delusion and placebo effect.

I stopped listening to my butt-dyno, hung all kinds of sensors on the car, and started listening to the sensors - and we *immediately* started winning races.



Although it is *possible* that Koni has changed the internal mechanism - so I might be full of shit and you should test it yourself - if the Koni Yellow mechanism is still the same as those I tested, that is *not happening* and you are seeing placebo effect. In and around full hard, yes, very tiny changes to adjuster opening makes large force changes (to the point where hysteresis in the adjuster and the difficulty of being precise enough with the angular change on the knob makes it next to impossible to hit the same force repeatedly) As you get to the midrange, there is still decent control authority and the shock is no longer as sensitive to tiny changes in knob position - that range is usable. But as you continue to back the knob out, you run out of control authority and nothing else happens - even though the knob will still keep turning.

I *completely* believe you when you say you can feel a difference in that range, because Brother, I was there too. But unless you have a dyno trace that proves it... it ain't happening.



Koni doesn't want 3rd party shock tuners. They had some bad experiences with Super Tunas making "custom" Konis and angry customers blaming Koni for the problems. I totally got that and did not hold it against them. Me & Lee got along just fine.

Bilstein and Penske absolutely would work with me. Both outfits were awesome. I was an approved Penske rebuilder, for a while....

Koni makes a product to fit a price point, and their product is *leaps and bounds* better than all the other low-price-point "shocks" (BC, Megan, JIC, etc etc etc) But the tradeoff at that price point is that the adjuster is limited and the shocks do not match off the self (unless you get lucky). We sold kits based on Koni parts - we just bought in bulk, and dynoed everything, and then paired up matching parts.



Ain't no such thing. "Proprietary valving" is a HUGE Super Tuna red flag (and I note that Steeda doesn't seem to be making any such claim) because unless you are on the same natural frequencies, your valving is specific to you. Change the driver from Matt Braun (130 lbs soaking wet) to Sam Strano (significantly north of that last time I saw him) and the valving changes. Lighter wheels? Valving changes. etc etc.



Steeda is right. I tested shocks with click-adjusters that produced different forces at a given number depending on which direction you approached it from. So if you wanted setting "3", going 1-2-3 produced a different result than going 5-4-3.

In the useful adjustment range, Koni shocks are immune to this. Near full hard, this is a real problem on a Koni. Near full soft, the knob isn't doing anything anyway so you can be off by 180 degrees and it'll still match.

If anybody has any questions, feel free to ask.

Yesssssssssss! Hahahaha

 

[DG]

Steeda's Koni-based dampers are manufactured with different valving than Koni Yellows. That is what I meant by "proprietary valving".

So a couple of things here:

1. Shock valving really isn't all that hard. Determining the target curve is so simple that I have a JavaScript app on A2W that generates it. Figuring out what specific order of shimstacks and bleed orifices and whatnot that matches that curve is tougher, but that's mostly just trial and error and time on a shock dyno. *Really* refining the curve takes suspension position sensors and shock velocity histograms... but again, it's a pretty straightforward process. There's no "secrets" to be had here. You aren't going to make a radical refinement to the performance of the car by using some Super Tuna valving. There *is* time to be had by getting the valving right, and with certain course dependencies, that can be a *big* chunk of time (we had one specific course where there was a big dip mid-corner. We could hold a tighter, faster line because our car didn't get upset by the dip, where other cars had to slow right down or get launched into the weeds) - but nobody is going to have some weird take on valving that differs significantly from what I've published and produces miracle results;

2. There are Super Tunas out there who will sell you valvings they have pulled clean out of their assholes, and will refuse to provide dyno plots because the valvings are "secret" and "proprietary". This is a Giant Red Flag and an indicator that they just don't know what they are doing;

3. I find it easy to believe that Steeda have developed suspension packages for which they have done the analysis similar to how I describe it, and they have come up with a valving that better matches their parts combination than an OTS Koni Yellow valving, and they have Koni make them as a Steeda part number. If this is what they are doing, I'd expect that the "average case" damping curve would be right smack in the middle of the typical Koni usable adjustment zone - that would give the customer some control authority on either side of the average to tweak to better match where his car deviated from what "the average" is. That's how I'd do it (that is, in fact, how I did it with my Penske packages);

3. If you are in the ballpark, damping-wise, errors in actual damping curve vs theoretical optimum really aren't that punishing. It's more important that the shocks match each other, side to side, than the curve deviates from the theoretical optimum by 5 lbf at 1 in/sec or whatever. I shipped every Penske C5 Corvette package matched to my baseline curve - which was a bone standard OEM Z06 shock. When you bought my shocks, you got a dyno plot showing the whole adjustment range of each shock, plus you got a plot overlaying the left and right shock (on that axle) with my baseline, so you could see that the shocks matched each other and the baseline. All that dyno time added to the package price... but you knew what you got. No secrets. I didn't provide the shimstack description... but the shocks were user-serviceable, so if you really wanted to know, you could;

4. So I'd understand if Steeda was in no hurry to publish their shimstack and/or foot valve stack configuration... but this information is in no way *proprietary* or *secret* - any more than an EFI computer calibration is (and EFI calibration suffers its own Super Tuna problems with similar red flags)

Now I'd expect Steeda to provide *actual dyno plots* for *my shocks*, if I bought from them. That goes double if they are based on the same technology as Koni Yellows, because I know from direct experience that tolerance variation on that mechanism means that the same part numbers rarely match OTS. Failing to provide those plots is evidence of either ignorance (willful or clueless) of the force variation of these sorts of shocks, laziness, or a deliberate decision to hold the price point down (which would be fair ball - but the customer should be told the risks up front) If you buy a shock from *anyone*, and it doesn't come with a dyno plot, task #1 is to get those suckers dynoed and see exactly what you have. Do I EVER have war stories about shocks bought pig-in-a-poke!

One final point about Steeda: I've never worked with them, never touched their stuff, know them vaguely by reputation but have heard nothing concrete one way or the other. I have ZERO bones to pick with them and ZERO desire to throw rocks.

BUT....

One of the really deeply shocking things I learned throughout my racing career is the number of operations out there - some with big names and well established pedigrees - that had *no idea what they were doing* and had either backed into their successes by dumb luck or just happened to be a little less ignorant than the other guys. As I moved from series to series and my contact circle expanded, I kept waiting to see at what level of motorsport this was no longer true. I never hit it. There are clueless F1 teams, Indy teams, LeMans teams, WRC teams, NASCAR teams... the rabbit hole is bottomless. At all levels, these operations are run by humans and humans make mistakes, make bad decisions, get lazy, choose to willfully misrepresent... you name it.

This means you can NEVER EVER EVER take the claims of ANY tuner at face value. You must ALWAYS verify what it is you have been sold, and you must be prepared to discover that someone you trusted and believed was, in fact, talking out their ass. This was why every single shock I shipped came with a dyno plot - I wanted to provide legit proof that I had done what I said I was going to do. And I was under soooo much pressure to not do that, e.g. ship a "representative" dyno plot so I didn't have to burn dyno time - and I wouldn't do it. And the first time I caught when I had accidentally built a shock upside-down (compression shimstack on rebound side and vice versa) that validated that decision.

So while I have nothing bad to say about Steeda - honestly - I would consider every single claim they make as suspect until individually verified. Trust no one!

Or, quite honestly, someone who is sick and tired of Ford's own OEM damper design which makes the car bouncy as sin unnecessarily

Never forget that Ford has to design to a car that might see a 100 lb driver running with a litre of gas in the tank, to a car full of 300lb passengers, a full tank, and a trunk full of anvils. Their range of potential natural frequencies (and surface conditions) are far wider than any race car. You can't throw rocks at Ford when the target they have to hit is so diffuse.

 

[wildcatgoal]

Never forget that Ford has to design to a car that might see a 100 lb driver running with a litre of gas in the tank, to a car full of 300lb passengers, a full tank, and a trunk full of anvils. Their range of potential natural frequencies (and surface conditions) are far wider than any race car. You can't throw rocks at Ford when the target they have to hit is so diffuse.

And Steeda (and Koni) didn't design their, mind you, **~$700 for an entire set of dampers package** for a much narrower range than Ford, just for stiffer spring rates and lower drops, so I don't understand any criticism of a meaningless (to the targeted customer and then some) variation between two mass-produced shock valve actuals on a dyno plot. Expecting Steeda (or Koni) to offer valve-matched shocks and individually dyno each damper that goes out the door for $700 is lunacy. Ain't happening. Steeda's Pro-Action shocks are more expensive because they are a variation from the norm for Koni to produce (blue in color, valving, different stickers, and it cannibalizes their own marketed product). That's all.

I have 350 front rate springs and 1200 rear rate springs (front is a strut, so effectively that's the wheel rate; rear figure not the wheel rate) and I weigh 210 lbs. (should be 180... ug) and have driven with 4 20" wheels with tires plus about another 150 lbs. total of other crap and it drove great. Then I unloaded it all and did a track day and beat my PB at that track be 4 seconds on a partially wet track. They do just fine. And nobody but the most seasoned of race drivers on the stiffest of chassis will notice in the real world effect of manufacturing variation between valve effectiveness on Koni Yellow (and similar valve design) shocks. Nor is it actually holding them back.

 

[ansibe]

Hi there! Far North Racing here! If anybody has any questions, feel free to ask.

I appreciate A2W, and any evidence based advise I can find.

I'm a normal Koni Yellow customer - I enjoy track days (not competition), and have no access to a shock dyno. I set up my suspension by feel because I have no other choice. I'm constantly amazed at how far I have to rotate adjusters to feel a difference, so I found your article comforting (maybe there is no difference!).

How should I set up my Yellows? Rebound adjustment shouldn't make a damper feel stiffer, but I swear it does. Is my butt lying to me?

I adjust rebound for a few reasons:
it holds the rear down when I'm accelerating out of corners, which makes the car easier to control when I lose traction.
more rear rebound reduces wheel hop
more front rebound reduces weight transfer

Is this a "you're doing it wrong" moment?

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