Hey hey,

<----- Ive got KONI Adjustables in my car. ( '02 206 Gti )

can someone please explain damper rates to me. and what benifits are achieved by having slower / faster . softer / harder.

I dont know how these things work and it ****s me lol. I know that it controls how fast or slow the strut returns to normal position. But more advanced info please.


Any help appreciated.

i do setups for this stuff for my brothers race bike so it works on the same principle....This is gonna be just a general guide, best thing to do is have a play around with the settings and see how they work.
Your shock will have 2 dampenings, Compression (or Bound), and Rebound.
Your Compression dampening determines how fast the spring compresses. If you wind your Compression dampening all the way up (slower) it will make it really difficult for the shock to move, you will feel all the little bumps as there is not enough force to compress the spring. Big Bumps however will be absorbed. Unfortunately our roads have small bumps and big bumps so u need to find a setting somewhere in the middle.

Your Rebound dampening determines how fast the spring returns to its normal position after it has been compressed. If your run no Rebound dampening (fast) your car will be very "bouncy" as the spring comes back up really fast. (think of what would happen if u compressed a spring and all of a sudden took the load off it). However too much Rebound dampening can have adverse effects as the spring is taking too long to come up. If u have a lot of bumps after one another the suspension can "Ramp Up" and it will feel as though the suspension is doing nothing as the spring has not had time to come back to position after each bump.

In general u run more Rebound than Compression dampening, although the valving in the shock may have already been set up like this to compensate for it.

No-one can give u an exact setup you need to play around and see what you like. it will also depend on what sort of driving you are doing and how rough the roads are. Your spring-rate also plays a great role into how much dampening you run.

Hope this has helped a bit.

edit: also, for suspension dampening the amount of clicks are always measured from all the way off, so in your case (fast). so if u say yur running 3 clicks on Rebound, thats 3 clicks out from fast, towards slow.