KW V3 Settings...How are yours setup?

[Kliminati456]

Finally getting around to mounting mine very soon on my 90 CQ. What are you guys set at for compression and rebound for street/track? The book that came with them is sort of confusing in terms of initial setup. Compression is 14 way adjustable(clicks) and rebound is 18 way adjustable(clicks). I'm looking for a good initial setup but also some good settings to play around with once they get settled in.

[Audi500HP]

Doing the same job.. what to do?

Cheers
Fernando

[Kliminati456]

Fernando did you get my pm?

Currently Compression set @ 9/14 clicks F/R and Rebound @ 12/18 clicks F/R (14 and 18 being stiffest settings). I have front and rear set same because I have a 26mm rear anti roll bar upgrade which induces good over steer. If you don't have a stock or upgraded rear anti roll bar then you may want to set front and rear differently. Great for everyday comfort but also good for very spirited driving. Each time you readjust remember when you set them to go all the way to full stiff then click back down to where you want them to be. Also remember it will take about 1000 mile....err approx. 1600 km .... before your shocks and springs will sit naturally so it will take some time to settle in and may not feel right at first. Also in the U.S. our coupes are all b3 style suspension, I'm not sure on your 94 s2 if rear suspension was changed but I did this so I can easily adjust the rears as the front.

[Sonic]

Thought i'd bump this thread having had KW V3 coilovers fitted a couple of weeks ago.

My immediate sense was that the car drove immeasurably better on the road, but more interestingly I had it on track at Castlecoombe a couple days after fitment and noticed it had a tendency for understeer whilst accelerating out of corners.

As far as i understand it the way to dial this out is to "flatten" the car out under acceleration in order to decrease dive at the back and provide better grip to the front... so the solution being to increase bump resistance at the rear?

My current setup (as far as i'm aware from VRS) is (F/R) bump 10/7, rebound 15/10.

I'm thinking to adjust bump to 10/10 and rebound 15/12 to induce more oversteer at the rear, but i'm not certain how sensitive the adjustments are having not done it before.

I know the rebound adjustment is via the top and i have access to the rear as pictured above. I think the bump adjustment is on the underside of the strut, so i'll probably need to jack the car up?

Any other thoughts, recommendations or experiences on settings?

[jade]

There's a Koni guide to setting up coilovers floating around somewhere it's been posted a couple of times, sorry I do not have a link

[Sonic]

This is the one ive just found (in both German and English).

Also some good reading here which has helped me understand a little bit more about suspension setup.

[Error404]

You need to increase the rear roll stiffness - swap the front & rear springs so you have 60n front and 70n rear

[Sonic]

I've not got round to swapping the springs - they're setup as they were from KW.

I did however make some adjustments to the bump/rebound settings -

Max bump = 14 clicks
Max rebound = 20 clicks

e.g B: 12 = full stiffness (clockwise, 14 clicks) then reduce 2 clicks.

Changed from (F/R):

B: 10 / 7
R: 15 / 10

to:

B: 8 / 10
R: 15 / 14

This had the desired effect of increasing oversteer (front bump decrease, rear bump increase and rear rebound increase all = more oversteer) however it's also introduced some other considerations which i want to dial out -

1) The rear end now goes light and tends to snap out under heavy breaking (RS6 brakes upfront).
2) The front-end goes light and is skittish under heavy acceleration.

I figure the solution to 1) is increase front bump to stiffen up the front compression and keep the car flatter under breaking and the rear in contact with the ground.

The solution to 2) is increase rear bump to stiffen up the rear compression and keep the car flatter under heavy acceleration, and the front tyres in contact with the ground.

Increasing front bump = understeer
Increasing rear bump = oversteer

so the result should be the same level of over/understeer but increased stability under breaking and acceleration.

Thus, my new settings to try are:

B: 10 / 12
R: 14 / 14

Any thoughts?

[Rusty]

Sounds like the rebound is too high, so the tyre is losing contact with the road.

Need to get those springs swapped and then set it up from there.

[Sonic]

Surely under both heavy breaking and heavy acceleration it's low-compression that's under assault, not the rebound?

The rebound comes into play after the compression is complete, and which is when the car currently correctly itself nicely as heavy breaking/acceleration decreases - hence i thought the rebound settings were good and the bump settings would be the ones to stiffen up.

[Rusty]

You're talking about the axle that's lifting though, so rear under braking, front under acceleration. In that instance, the rebound damping isn't allowing the wheel to react fast enough. You've added a lot of rebound damping for your new settings, so take a bit out and see how it feels.

Coupes are a bit skittish under braking, as the rear goes toe-out and under acceleration, then front goes toe out, both of which remove stability.

[Sonic]

Just trying to get my head around this

I previously added some rear-rebound stiffness to increase oversteer.

I'd have thought it was better to prevent the axle lifting (by stiffening the opposing axle bump setting), rather than adjusting the rebound setting to allow the suspension to drop in order to keep contact with the road?

An interesting line in one of those geometry links states that rebound stiffness needs to be harder than bump otherwise the car will become unsettled as it bumps again after rebound - or least that's my interpretation of it.

So if i soften the rebound then i'll also have to soften the bump to ensure my bump isn't stiffer than my rebound.

[Sonic]

Actually that last point isn't true, because a setting of B 8 does not equal R 8. B is out of 14 whereas R is out of 20, numbers which don't necessary relate to each other anyway, so i'm not sure when rebound stiffness > bump stiffness.

[LHD_Kid]

You need to increase the rear roll stiffness - swap the front & rear springs so you have 60n front and 70n rear

Just looking at this as I have acquired a set of V3...
Is the advice to swap the 60 and 70 to have the 70 on the rear...?

Other relevant info:

RS2 FARB
Whiteline RARB set at stiffest
Caster adjustable solid front top mounts
Solid rear top mounts
Poly bushed everything (subframe, gearbox, engine, diff, wishbones)
235/40 18 Federal RSRs

Are there settings that you guys would suggest as a good starting point? Or just go softest everything and start dialling harder...?

I'm tempted to run the KW suggested settings as a benchmark and see, but then I will be unlikely to bother changing springs front to back.....

[Error404]

I swapped my springs back to 70nm front and 60mm rear since I fitted climate control & AC.