Re: adjustable shocks

[Nizam Zambri <nizam@domain.elided>]

In my quest for the perfect balance of street and infrequent track use, I have
tried the three brands commonly offered for the Alfa 75/Milano.

Koni Red's (adjustable):  good, a little on the harsh side when mated with stock
springs
Spax (adjustable):  better, but doesn't last.  I went through TWO sets (eight
shocks, $90/ea) with each absorber showing a leak within two years of initial
installation.
Bilstein:  better, but doesn't work well with stock springs and torsion bars

One big lesson learned is that just changing shocks without changing anything else
does not improve performance.  This has been debated hotly over and over again on
this digest, and I have practical evidence that indeed, it does not work.

So the question is, how DO you tune a shock absorber?  I don't have a copy of "How
to make your car handle", where the author apparently spills the beans on how to
calculate your compress/rebound rate, given your spring rate and the weight of that
corner of the car.

How do you disassemble a shock absorber, "valve" it to your specs, and put it back
together?  Let's say you need to send it back to Koni, or Bilstein, or Spax, what
do you tell them?  I want 50lbs/inch/second ?

There must be some suspension gurus out there ...

Nizam
88 75 3.0V6
94 164 Super 3.0V6 24v
97 155V6 2.5

--
to be removed from alfa, see /bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe alfa" to majordomo@domain.elided