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Coilover decision - adjustable damping, do I really need it?

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tony_danza:
Hmm... Interesting Hurdy, mine are on the middle - maybe I should just stop being a lazy git and get under the car to change them?

illyun:
I have Bilsteins and I can adjust the ride -  i.e. soft or hard - on a scale of 1 to 10.  Is this what you mean by damping?  There is the rebound rate also - not sure if its different - but this is preset to an 'optimal' level by Bilstein.  You can change the spring rate on the K3s though

gazbutS3:
sometimes to much adjustability can be a bad thing, people fiddle when they don't really know what there doing and makes things worse or even dangerous. See it all the time on the sports bikes, alot of them have adjustable ride height, rebound damping, compression damping etc front and rear and people mess and make things worse.

IMO for road use and the occasional track day fixed damping is fine, if your planning to get heavily into trackdays etc the adjustment can be handy, and maybe as things wear, down the line, the adjustment can be used to compensate for this

tony_danza:
^^^ agreed, if my issues are as simple as just using soft and hard on the ARB cos the frequency on medium is a bit odd, then I'm more than happy to keep using my non-adjustables. I'd love a set of Bilsteins/KW3's, but I won't go out of my way to get some until this lot reach end of life.

I know nowt about set up and agree people can have too much. I was given 3 rough tips I stick to as a novice:

Run it soft in the wet, you need to "feel" it going.

Run it hard in the dry, you'll bottle out before the car does.

Run it in the middle with a touch more ride height at the 'ring. Unless you're running super stiff race set ups, it'll bottom out like hell if you're too low and the last thing you need is a snappy ARB on some bizarre camber corner.

GTIjames:
one thing i would say about the bilsteins is that they are so easy to use just turn wheel to lock and crawl under car and turn the dial, its ok having the ability to dampen them but if you have to jack the car up or take of wheels then it gets a bit of a hassle if you have not got those facilities and i doubt you will use them that often.

though out of your list mate, from what I have read the KW2 look pretty spot  on, in  terms of ride and reliability, or go for the bilstein non adjustable but get them fitted at a place which knows what they are doing and can do traditional alining and corner weighting which will give you best ride.

 :happy2:

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