So what can adjustable shocks tell you?(suspension tuning inside)

[zps2004]

Ok so I know a lot of you might have adjustable suspensions mainly in terms of being able to make damper adjustments. Can you feel a difference when you make adjustments to the shocks? Well yea, a lot of people can tell the difference.

The adjustments mean more though. They can tell you what your suspension is lacking in a way. Today I had the day off and decided to do some suspension tuning/testing. I did this after driving a 230WHP miata so I needed to mess with my car even though I only have about 115WHP. Anyway here it goes.

On my Ohlins there are about 36 "clicks" to adjust by. I am going to say that 0 is the softest and 36 is the stiffest for the sake of argument. When I got them I made adjustments to get them where I thought the car was good but I never really looked into anything else. Today I did. As the car is while I have been autocrossing it the front dampers have been at 21 and the rear was at about 10. Now you might think hey that means that the front dampers are stiffer than the rear. The answer is no.... Well honestly it is a maybe, you would need a shock dyno to tell, but from bouncing the car on a lift the rear actually seems stiffer. Either way the number of adjustments don't really mean much. On to the testing

Firstly I took the front shocks all the way up to the stiffest setting. Now after doing some testing I realized that like you would expect, the front of the car took more time to roll, and because of this it felt really planted. Initial turn in was about the same as before, but it felt a bit more stable. this is what my car needed.

Then I put the fronts to full soft. Again as you would expect, the front rolled quicker, and the rear seemed to come around more quickly. I then noticed that when powering out of a corner the car was much more stable. This is a good thing. I didn't remember looking into this when I had the fronts on full stiff though.

I then went back to full stiff and noticed the same thing for initial turn in, but the rear wasn't as stable when getting on the gas.

I then put the front back to 21, and put the rear on full soft. The initial turn in was still quick and it would rotate a lot, but it was more stable when powering out.

Going stiff in the rear would just cause the car to be too unstable so I didn't try it.

Looking at the information though there are a few things to notice. Firstly when it comes to the front there are good and bad things about different settings. For the turn in though a sway bar would help to control the front side to side better than the stiffer front shocks. This would allow me to run the shocks maybe softer this achieving the better weight transfer while getting back on the gas comming out of the corner.

For the rear I am going to keep it relatively soft, and after putting a larger front sway bar on, I will see how things are and if I need to stiffen them, or add the stock rear sway bar or bigger I will go from there. Bit without actually messing with things and seeing how they work, and taking notes I would have no idea where to go. Just some food for thought, next time you get adjustable suspension, and have a chance to do a test and tune. I would love to have a test and tune autocross one of these days.

[300zmankellan]

My rears are hard to adjust, so I have to change the fronts to match. They're koni yellows though so adjustability is a bit shady and there's no guarantee they're the same. My rears are relatively the same and pretty soft, so I have plenty of stability and grip powering out, but turn in is sluggish. I want to get a stiffer front sway bar, but for now (trying to equalize the front shocks) I have one at about 7/8 stiff and the other at about half and they're both pretty stiff. But the Z will never be a track machine, so I'm not intensely worried about it haha. Better stuff eventually, but I'm happy with the koni's for now.