Quote:
Originally Posted by 20psiMR
They have very small dampening range despite how many "clicks" they say you can turn. Ive had discussions with a few good suspension tuners before and most japanese coilovers, with the exception of Ohlins, have that problem. They are generally valved very stiff, the shock dyno's are all over the place, and they just arent that well constructed.
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For a given spring and corner weight, there should only need to be a small range of damping adjustment, largely to adjust for wear over time. Back in the dark ages, that is what the knob on the top of Koni's were designed for. A click every 10-20,000 miles would keep them in an optimal range for a given application.
A damper only needs a wide range of adjustability if it is designed to work with multiple spring configurations. This is not how most retail coilovers are designed/marketed. They are designed to work with the springs that came on them only or relatively small rate changes higher or lower. In most cases, dampers with a lot of adjustability lack the precision to be ideally tuned. 30 clicks over a 5% range is much more precise than 30 clicks over a 15% range.
And your average driver has little to no clue or the time and controlled environment to properly adjust a suspension. As a manufacturer, the last thing you want is to provide too much adjustability that it creates a negative product perception. Too many people think stiffer is better for handing, or that softer rides better and crank the knob in that direction blindly. Neither of these is really true.
I agree on the Shock Dyno numbers for a lot of the brands. I can't remember the site, but there is a guy who has run most of the major damper vendors stuff and much is crap being inconsistent for a given setting or worse, adjustment going opposite the direction of the knob change over some range.
I don't recall where Tein ranked, but it was better than most "JDM Yo" brands.
