For those of you who have owned/own kw variant 2 coilovers. I lowered my car about 1.5 inches in the front and 1.5 in the rear. I have the damping set to 2 clicks before full stiff in the rear and 6 clicks before full stiff in front. My car is pretty damn bouncy. Anyone suggest a good damping adjustment for the front and rear that wouldn't make it seem like I am riding on rails with no suspension? street friendly? I googled it and nothing came up lol vendors only. I also searched on this site but nothing came up either. I appreciate any input.

 

I do not own KWs but I'll offer up some advice. Back your dampening off and start on a soft side. Front and rear. Then experiment and see what the car feels like. If you feel that you want to go stiffer, dial in an extra click and try again. Take your time with this and you'll find the right settings. From what you describe, you have them set too high and the car is bouncing off every imperfection on the road. Especially on the street, you really want to allow the suspension some travel so that it can absorb small variations in the surface and do its job. Stiffer suspension is not necessarily better performing. You need some body roll to keep the tires gripping and it's pretty scary when you get bump steer mid corner at a moderate speed.

To give some point of reference, I have a set of Bilstein PSS10s. They have 10 clicks of adjustment: 1 to 10. What I did is I started at 5 from and rear. That was pretty good. After experimenting, I found that 7 front and 6 rear is a really good combination. It took some oversteer out and gave it a more neutral behavior. Also, very important, often times, the progression on the shock is not linear. 1 click from 4 to 5 is not the same respective progression as 5 to 6. In my case, after click 5, my rebound changes rapidly. Keep that in mind.

 

cool thanks a lot I appreciate the great info. I'm gonna try softer settings in the rear for sure since I don't really feel like the front is as stiff as the rear.

 

I just had the same coils installed on my Z. The guy at the shop told me that he usually spins them down all the way to the stiffest setting then brings them back up 6 settings from the stiffest. He said that's his standard when installing the KW's and then adjust from there. He did, I drove, and it's perfect as is. Try that.

 

I have shock dyno's for the 350Z Variant 2 and two things have alway's struck me about the plots. One, past half stiff and the rebound control becomes absurd. Second, at full soft to half stiff the valving is pretty good. I would only set them past half stiff if I was autocrossing with them and found I lowered my tmes with settings higher then that. And even then it had better be a smooth course because the rebound is not on a digressive curve.





^These are rebound adjustable shocks, but notice that bump does change past half stiff settings.

So, you have bounce issues directly related to excessive rebound control. IMO, reset to full soft and test. Adjust up from their as you see fit, keeping in mind that I said above about settings past half way.

 

I am wondering if I lowered the car too much because now I am getting a squeaking noise that is coming from the suspension when I go over imperfections on the street. Could also be my kinetix UCA's just gets a little annoying maybe ill try settings at half to full stiff and hopefully I am happy with them. I have the coils in the rear at the lowest setting in the rear and the front is about 16 turns from up from the lowest setting. Damping settings are 6 from full stiff and 7 or 8 from full stiff in the rear since I last changed them. I am pretty new to coilovers since this is my first set lol I am only used to lowering springs and stock shocks since thats what I have done on all my vehicles in the past. Thanks for the help everyone I really appreciate it.

 

squeaking may be from bolts not being tight enough. time to retorque!

 

Lifting the car up from a slammed stance will help.

 

Yeah slamming 1.5 inches will pre-load the sways quite a bit. New end-links and getting the car corner balanced should be in order for that big a drop.

 

If its even the sways don't load, but slamming the car you start to run out of up travel. When you run low on travel , your ride turns to crap.

 

Yeah I am going try lifting the car a little see how that works for me. Thanks again for the input everyone.

 

i'm running the v2's. i'm at about 8/9 in the fronts and 6 in the front (clicks from soft)