Good enough for fastest BS time second day at the San Diego Tour...against some very tough, very proven competition, with a mid pack driver

 

Trust me, you are going to prefer racing on the revalved Bilstein's over the OTS K's.
I wish you were here so you could try my ZOK. It ain't fair. Luckily, Kevin's dampers will be back at the end of the week so we can be on a level playing field again.
Some tricks up Ron's sleeves too for the near future.
It is sickening how easily I am top paxing with the new setup.
The car practically drives itself.
FM

 

The only way I'm on Bilsteins will be with FatCatMotorsports sponsorship

I need to concentrate more on learning to drive the car and less on playing around with set up...one of the few things I will publicly admit to agreeing with ULLLLLLLLLLLLLOSE on...

 

You won't jump ship if there is good evidence that you can make your car consistently .5 faster than your current setup?

I also agree with Jason to a point about driving better.

That is, I agree that you can drive around a couple of tenths but you start getting one car better than the other in the .5 of a second + range and that is hard to make up by "driving better".
At least it is when you already are at the level you are or at least the level you are when you are "on" and are having a good day.


Warning: Non RX8 info ahead.
I think it does relate though because I don't think the OTS K dampers are the be all end all for an autox 8.
The near future will tell if I am right or not.
After what happened this last weekend, more 8 drivers are open to some experimentation.

Kevin and I had a deal.
If I could out run him in his car versus me in my car by more than a few tenths on the same course, same day for a couple of events in a row, he was going to convert his car to my specs.

First event was an advantage to me by .709 in 53 seconds and, going off memory, this last event was about .8XX in 38 seconds but Kevin coned his best run which would have been about .6XX advantage to me. Still alot in 38 seconds.

Heck! I was only .3 off of Ron's CSP NC straight time in 38 seconds but this lot does not let Ron's car run free and he was on his second tier tires so I don't use that for comparing.
I would have LOVED to straight time him. though. That was probably my one chance that I am ever going to get.
I "do" think I can now run with his CSP car paxwise at most events that we will have. I did NOT think that before I did the revalving.

If Kevin could not get the new valving specs, he was going to go to a different class.
I would do the same if the situations were reversed.
You can only drive around a better car to a point.
Kevin is better at that than I am but too much is too much.
The word is that his shocks are almost done and will be getting shipped back soon. That should make him much happier.

Anyhow, I hope it all works as planned and we see some top BS drivers on the revalved Bilsteins kicking some butt.
I would love to have Bilstein start up a contingency program for us people that like them so much and use them.
There is a slim "possibility" of that in the future and I have my fingers crossed.

FM

 

Hmmmm.......A package arrived today

 

So is my brand new Koni front replacement. Will see if Shaikh can fit me in for dyno-run next weekend.

 

Jeez, you guys are getting serious...I better watch out, the smackdown might be coming

 

Even the mighty must fall........

Until then, enjoy your time at the top.

 

To make it happen, how about skipping Reno two-day fun and grace us with your teaching at 6/2 SFR autox school =)

 

Actually, the two day event the weekend of the school is at Mather AFB in Sacramento. But, I received a specific request to teach at the SFR school, so that's what I'll be doing that weekend. I really wanted to run up at the Shriners event in Sacramento, but it's better to give something back to the region and help out...although, given that I'm not a very experienced teacher or autocrosser, I'm not sure how much help I'll be!

 

Sweet, this is the best $75 I ever spend on if I'm lucky enough to have you as my instructor. There are many other qualified instructors in SFR for sure, though being able to drive the RX-8 at the top level consistently, you are THE man!

 

Be careful what you wish for..."look ahead" is about the only contribution I can make

Thanks for the props, CRX, but I'm far from the man...well, unless you're talking to my wife, of course

 

You going to put 'em on or revalve first?

Once you get it going, let's do some back to backs of our two cars and see what we think. It could be interesting. Of course, the tires you bought from me might make it hard to get an "apples to apples" comparison...those suckers must have 65 runs on them, by now!

 

Steve, I'm heading to Socal on business for a few days but look forward to dyno'ing your Konis when I get back.. waiting to hear that Stuart has HDs in hand...

 

Yeah, I'm sitting here and wondering what I should do.....Bilstein recommended I install them first before considering the revalve. I guess that's the direction I am leaning right now. I think ulitmatley I'll end up with a better shock if I can add some input to the valving preference.....Plus, it's a three day weekend and I do not have anything planned.....

 

We got our package too!
Ours are getting revalved before installation once we confirm stock class legal measurements.
FM

 

Yeah, they'll probably need a revalve to be competitive with the Koni's. I've had mine installed now for about one week. I put them in with stock valving because I wasn't sure where to start or what I wanted. My intitial impressions on the street were pretty good. They are firmer then stock but feel like they absorb the bumps much better then the stock shocks. Taking corners on the street are again much more stable and easier to control.

Fast forward to R compounds and and "real" race situations......They're better then then the stock shocks but there were times I wanted more control today at Candlestick park.....Granted, this surface is horrible and is full of big bumps so I'm not sure how these will handle a flatter surface. Still, I was hoping for a little more control over some of the big bumps today. I would say adding some compression is a must......

As for ride height, I can tell you that they will not lower your car

 

I would agree, the ups and downs of Candlestick definitely gave the shocks a workout! One person described it as "kind of like motocross", meaning you have to plan where you are going to land from the various jumps

Until you are on a new set of tires, it will be hard to know exactly what you are working with...the 'stick surface really requires soft tires to get good grip, imho.

 

I'm going to get new tires before I start blaming the shocks for my lack of improvement.....To be honest, I don't feel I'm driving that well right now and still need some time to get comfortable with this car. I spun hard on my second run and need to adjust to having oversteer. My set up seems pretty loose right now. I may end up adding some rear camber and stiffening up the front sway bar to see how that works. Until then, I'll just imagine I'm loosing my mojo......

 

The car will be nowhere near as loose on fresh tires. Before you change anything, get some tires, IMHO.

 

I have to concur with Mike about Candlestick being the primo example of fresh R-comp making a big difference. The fast back sections of long sweeper right before 1st slalom and the transition between 1st and 2nd slaloms give fresher tires a clear advantage. Also, the front section with offset/box galore is more forgiving on fresher tires in term of line selection.

I was on M+S street tire in a Miata on Sat's practice course, running in reverse direction, and the difference of grip/velocity/approach was huge.

Good looking kids you got there, maybe they got your mojos =)

 

I met with Steve and his very patient fiance yesterday I ran the brand-new front RX8 Koni (warrantied by Koni due to leakage issues) and an existing rear on the Roehrig. Results are attached showing full soft, 1 turn, 2 turns, and 2.5 turns which I called full stiff on the graphs.

Rebound: At soft it was very stock-looking (similar to other stock dampers I've run, I don't have OE Tokicos to compare to). Turns one and two made changes that were more proportionate at mid to high piston speeds (above 5ips) but less noticeable below 3ips which is where a lot of autocross action occurs, at least on smooth lots. As most of us know who've used Konis with their preload adjustor, the real damping increases occur in the last 1/2-1 turn from full stiff, which was about 2.75 turns from soft but I only went to 2.5 turns on the dyno. There was more front rebound damping available than rear at all settings.

Compression had a decent rise to it beyond 1 ips, though the car would definitely benefit from more low-speed, as Penske and my revalves are set up. As with the Honda S2000 dampers, there is more front vs. rear bump which I imagine was intended to reduce exit oversteer (those settings promote exit understeer). Good for higher-speed stability, but not for good autocross tuning.

The force vs. displacement curve showed the typical Koni hysteresis (i.e. lack of control) due to their twin-tube design and small volume displaced vs. stroke. It was better than some Konis I've looked at, however, due to the larger diameter body and rod. The lower rear vs. front compression would promote exit understeer as I already mentioned, parallel to the fact that the lower rear vs. front rebound would promote entry understeer. I believe some have complained about these behaviors, at least the exit understeer?

There did seem to be some cross talk between bump and rebound on a few settings and it was difficult to get consistent results with the rear damper (as the light blue and green curves illustrate - they were supposed to be full soft but gave very different high-speed results!).

The rear adjustment, by fully compressing the body then turning it, is a necessary evil given the packaging constraints. I wonder how JIC and other dampers with rod-mounted bleed adjustors, are accessed. Or is it the same situation - change settings only when the unit is out of the car without a spring? Having a bleed adjustor through the rod seems an advantage in this case, which is what I plan for the Bilsteins.

Given these dyno runs and my evaluation, I know how I'd tune a set of Bilsteins. I'd like to autocross Steve's and Stuart's cars (hint!) to get a sense of the balance and then see how I can improve Stuart's if he's ready to Go Faster!

Shaikh

 

It was educational to see shock dyno for the very first time. Thank you Shaikh for making the dyno and results available to the RX8 community, in the pursuit of better performance. Learned a great deal and can't wait see to what you can do with Stuart's Bilstein.

Let's make that happen, say event 11 or 13? I hope to have the little incident taken care of before than. See https://www.rx8club.com/1918758-post/ for my rear sway bar broken bracket bolt. Sometimes a torque wrench can do you more harm than good I swear!

 

And here is a dyno graph for rear D-Specs:

https://www.rx8club.com/attachment.p...5&d=1142393666

Full soft on the Konis is clearly much stiffer than full soft on the D-Specs, which is consistent with some subjective street impressions posted in the handling forum.

Full stiff, the two are very close. Konis have a little more of a knee, but not much more. D-Specs appear to be actually stiffer from about 1.5 ips on up, although we don't know how much more the Konis have in the last 1/4 turn. This is consistent with some subjetive impressions made by myself and a few others who have autocrossed both and found them quite similar.

I have OEM curves (for the rear) somewhere. If I recall correctly, they were somewhere between the Konis at full soft and the D-Specs at full soft.

 

I'm game for this.....I need to get new tires before we can do any "real" comparisons. We're in the process of trying to buy a house so pulling thousands out of the bank account for my hobby is a tough sell to my wife....
Still, I have my ways.