Koni Yellows - how should they be adjusted for street driving?
 

I snagged some Koni Yellows, for the 2011+ Mustang so a direct fit without having to swap the upper strut mount, for a great price off ebay. So I'm wondering what everyone's experience is with them -

How do you have them adjusted for around town driving?
How do you have yours adjusted if you are going to do some long distance, highway, driving?

And if you use them at the drag strip, what adjustments are you using?

I love mine. Absolutely what the car needs to really handle like it should. I set it to full soft riding around town, maybe a quarter or half turn at the most for short trips. I haven't played around with the settings much at the track but when I did track it they made a tremendous difference in how the car felt. I find that having it on anything but the softest setting for long distances gave me a headache because you feel every slight bump in the road on a harder setting.

I just installed mine but have yet to get the car back on the road due to wi winter and everything's not put back together. I set them at half turn from the firmest, but well see! I plan on auto crossing and drifting

Clockwise or counter-clockwise to make the firmer?

I figure at the drag strip, full soft up front and passenger rear at full firm with the driver side a little less? At least to start and then work from there.

I drive on mine full soft and then at the track I have the rear Full firm and the fronts about 3 turns from soft to hard. Seems like that setting has worked well for me. Still get some weight transfer without it being to much

I have some new Koni yellows to install and have been thinking about how I would set them up for the strip. I agree with you about the "full soft" up front. This would provide the least resistance to the front struts extending for good front end lift. As for the rear, it makes sense to me to do the opposite and set up the right rear with less rebound than the left rear. At launch this would allow the RR shock to extend easier and plant the tire better. As a caveat, this would be for a suspension set up with the proper geometry where the rear of the car rises at launch. If the rear of the car squats, then setting the shocks as you suggest would probably work best. JMHO.

Video I've seen of my car at launch shows it to squat. But that is the stock suspension, on the 2.73 gears. Now I have 3.55's in it, and will have the Koni Yellows. So guess I'll start with the set up as if it is the stock suspension and adjust from there.

From some of what I read, making it stiffer is going to make it harder to get traction, but this is from a road course perspective so it might not apply to a strip. But I do know that if you want to induce oversteer, you firm it up. And IIRC, counter-clockwise is firm.

Experiment , go over speedbumps at a very slow mph and see how the car reacts and feels at different settings and drive your roads too with different settings. I settled toward nearly full soft soft in the rear because harder made it slow to rise back up, i like it a couple quarter turns from full soft in the front, full soft it bounced back up too fast for my liking and felt a bit sloppy.

Fully clockwise is full soft. Don't force it.

There are only about 2.5 turns counterclockwise before you hit the full firm stop.

I'm guessing that for the dragstrip you'd start with the fronts full soft and the rears maybe midway to firm. Since Koni yellows adjust rebound only, you aren't going to be able to use rear shock damping adjustments to help plant the rear tires any quicker.


For street use, the best approach if you don't really know what you want is to start full soft and adjust upward to suit your preference for ride quality. Consider who else may be riding with you, or plan on adjusting the dampers for that situation. As an example, I'm happier with mine set about 1 turn up from full soft in the front and about +3/4 turn in the read, but if my wife is going to be riding in it for an extended length of time I'll dial both of those numbers back to 1/4 turn or so front and about 1/8 turn rear. I don't touch mine for long trips.

For an autocross or track day (road course) +1.5 front and about +1.25 rear has been enough to keep the car composed. With stiffer springs (I'm still on the OE's) you'd probably want a little more.

Plan on experimenting, and plan on the fronts and rears to end up at different settings. Ths following is snipped out of a Koni tuning guide for dialing in shocks for competition that you can use the rebound damping portions of. I snipped out the bump damping parts. Although it's specifically for finding a competition setting, you can use it as guidance for establishing your street settings, except that you might stop adjusting based on ride quality rather than consideration of what happens to handling.





Norm