Koni Sport or Koni Race?
 

So, I'm looking to finally upgrade the suspension on my civic, and I'm looking at the tried and true Koni GC combo, unfortunately I can't seem to decide whether or not it would be worth the extra money to go for the race set up as opposed to the sport yellows. I plan on running around 400 lb/in F and 450 lb/in R and I wanted some input from some of the more experienced members before I actually went and dropped the money for the setup.

A little info on my car:
LSD, FWD obviously
Full interior, roughly 2300lbs
22mm rear sway w/ subframe brace
currently on neuspeed lowering springs 180 lb/in F 220 lb/in R
eventually I'll be going to 15x8s (between 0-18 offset) with 225 r-comps

I don't care about ride quality for daily driving, worse comes to worse I'll set everything to full soft.

Yellows are normally claimed to be good for up to 450-500 spring rates, so they'd probably "work" for your application. But, you're going to be near the end of their adjustment to get them to work properly, and that's not the ideal situation.

Take a close look at the advantages the race shocks give you vs. their cost.

You might also consider one of the cheaper coilover kits, like the K-Sport or something. The benefit there is that, unlike the Koni Sports that are valved based on your stock spring rates, the K-Sport kit is valved for the stiffer springs that come with it. They'll have many of the benefits of the Koni race setup, and probably at a much lower price.

Give Jeff a call.

Jeff is TreeKiller correct?

Maybe it's because I don't know anything about shocks but a google search of "K-Sport shock dyno" doesn't yield any favorable reviews.

Is price really that big of a factor?

Here is a interesting read on shocks...
DGs Autocross Secrets aka Autocross to Win - Shocks

yes that's me. the big advantage to the race dampers is their shortened bodies the Race dampers are nice.. as for the K-sport dyno, personally I can't complain, I really like mine. and they offer a good range of adjustment, and the value is for certain there. the bad thing about internet suggestions, is people have their preferred brand. I prefer a mono tube so that knocks me out of all but the highest priced koni's.

And as a person I respect, here is a world class autocrosser's oppinion
http://www.bimmerhaus.com/tech/shocktuningTN.html

Hey, Dennis has rewritten his stuff and called it a "book" since the last time I saw it!

Dennis Grant is a good guy. I don't remember if I've actually met him (might have at the Solo Nats in '99), but we had a lot of discourse on the old Team.Net autocross mail list back in the day. He's obviously VERY opinionated, however.

Bear in mind that the level of tuning he's talking about is what a "national level autocross champion" needs. If you're nowhere near that level as a driver, having shocks that are dialed in to that degree is not something that you're really going to notice.

Yes, there's good, better and best... and there's decent, mediocre, bad and really bad. I'm really not sure where the K-Sports fit on that scale... but I've had Koni Sports, both standard and revalved/degassed, I've had adjustable Teins, and I've had K-Sports on two different cars, all with a variety of different spring rates. I found them all to work quite well when adjusted properly.

Of course, if you ask Jeff, that probably doesn't mean much. I'm a very "adaptable" driver. But, still... none of the roads or autocross surfaces that we drive on are "perfect" or even remotely "consistent". And most of our skillsets (mine included) are also lacking in many ways. With all of this imperfection... is it really worth it to pay 2-3 times as much money for "perfect" shocks?

PS: Of all the shocks I've ever owned, the only ones that required me to run them at full stiff were the standard Koni Sports with 450 lb springs.

Thats a good point Loren, but now my question is what differentiates Koni Sports from K-Sports, besides one not including springs of course. From what I saw, the K-Sport comes with pre-selected spring rates, and one would simply have to buy the coil overs with the desired springs for the koni sports. I would assume that the K-sports are valved differently, is this correct?

What car was that? Saturn?

Nope, I ran the Saturn with stock shocks the entire time I owned it. I was too cheap to buy shocks. (at the time, the only available option was a semi-custom setup that sold for over $800... which was a lot of money back then, especially for me)

The Konis were on my Miata. When I went from 375 to 450 springs in the front, full stiff was required to keep them from bouncing. The revalved/degassed Konis weren't much better because they were merely revalved for greater compression damping. The knob on a Koni (and most other generic single-adjustables) primarily adjusts rebound damping. Higher spring rates require more rebound damping.