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Shock dyno info - &
TABLE OF CONTENCE LINK
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Penske's Adjustable Shock Technical Manual -
From the information bellow; I'll personally look into KONI YELLOW's for my shock upgrades. I plan to utilize a dyno for shock matching and a group buy. (no specific time set; but will post a date in near future.)
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"Koni
I have a love-hate relationship with Koni. Love, because Koni makes more production-car fitments than anybody, the performance of their shocks is reasonable, and they have a knob. Hate, because Koni won't let anybody service their shocks except Koni and a couple of priviliged few rebuilders, and they wouldn't let me become one of those special few. It used to make me mad as hell to have to turn customers away, because they wanted me to rebuild their Konis for them, but Koni wouldn't let me.
Grrr.
That being said, the ubiquitous Koni Yellow is actually a decent shock for the price. The off-the-shelf valving is usually pretty good, the knob is rebound-only with very little crosstalk onto compression, and while the knob is SERIOUSLY nonlinear, it can be worked with: a typical Yellow had 2 1/2 turns of adjustment. The last 1/2 turn to full hard is useless (tiny changes make huge force changes) and the last half to full turn does nothing, but that turn to turn and a half in the middle of the range usually isn't bad.
Koni's quality control on the Yellows is such that the odds on any two shocks with the same part number matching forces are very small - there's quite a bit of shock-to-shock variation. But bought as a group buy and then dyno matched, it is possible to put together matched sets. Be aware that I've seen Koni Yellows with the same part number that matched perfectly when one was 1/2 turn off full hard, and the other was at full soft - I consider the adjuster knob a way to match shocks on the dyno, NOT a tuning tool.
Koni will also rebuild and revalve for you, although the labour and parts pricing is a little high. Koni is "save now, pay later" where Bilstein is "pay now, save later".
Konis that are custom-valved to make a lot of force also have a tendancy to explode... but that's a "Doctor, it hurts when I do this" problem, not Koni's fault.
Where there's no Bilstein fitment and Penskes are too expensive, Konis are usually perfectly adaquate. They are, by far, the best budget shock and better than any of the crap coming out of Japan. JIC, GAB, Tokiko, Tein - synonyms for "crap".
Dyno Plots
You must, must, must have dyno plots for your shocks - and not just "typical" plots, but the actual performance of each of your shocks. Anybody who cannot or will not provide you with dyno plots for your shocks is a charlatan. Running the dyno was a huge eye-opener for not only what was out there, but also on what shocks actually did.
Not only that, but you need as a minimum plots of the forces at slower speeds, around the 3 in/sec peak speed range. Plots of faster speeds are OK, but once you're over about 10 in/sec you're into "big bumps" mode and you're probably just digressing the hell out of the forces anyway. You want to see the shock operating in low speeds, and that is where I found the majority of shock-to-shock variation lived. Shocks that produce near-identical forces at high speeds can be very different at low speeds - get the low speed plots!"
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Hi Rev
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Extreme Psi
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