In-car Electronic Adjustable Suspension?

[Faarooq]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone knew of any other suspension products on the market (besides Tein EDFC) that allows for damper adjustable settings in the car? This is for an R33 GTR. I have searched around a bit but seems most of the in car adjustable gear is made for newer model cars and mostly overseas models. If they are not available from the major manufacturers, does anyone know if there are places that do custom suspension with custom in-car controls?

Thanks

[Luke_ENR34]

Cusco do one. i just brought Cusco's zero-2E then you pay extra and get the incar damper adjustment controller also.

[STATUS]

Greddy are having a promotion with AUTOBARN this month where you get free in cabin damper adjustment with all TYPE-s coilovers.... i think the container i ordered was landing on the 1st of jan... give any store a call. i can no longer help though as i resigned a fortnight ago

[Faarooq]

Cool, thanks for the replies guys, I will have a look into both.

Cheers

[neil_se]

I ordered some Greddy Type S coilovers today from Autobarn with the bonus remote damper adjuster

[Sydneykid]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone knew of any other suspension products on the market (besides Tein EDFC) that allows for damper adjustable settings in the car? This is for an R33 GTR. I have searched around a bit but seems most of the in car adjustable gear is made for newer model cars and mostly overseas models. If they are not available from the major manufacturers, does anyone know if there are places that do custom suspension with custom in-car controls?

Thanks

Hi Mark, before you go ahead and waste your money, do you know what adjusting the damper rates actually does? Do you know what you are actually adjusting? Bump, rebound, both? If both, then in what ratio? Which way do you adjust them to overcome some low speed understeer? What about high speed oversteer? Do you really think that changing the rebound damping, on end or both ends, will affect the overall handling balance? Perhaps you think that soft for street is the go and then hard for track? What if that isn't right?

If you don't know exactly what you are doing, wouldn't you be better off with a shock that has a large window of operating efficiency so that you don't have to adjust them?

Happy New Year

Gary

[DECIM8]

Type s rock .. they come standard with ajustable manual turn knobs.. except mine was missing :@

[Faarooq]

Hi Mark, before you go ahead and waste your money, do you know what adjusting the damper rates actually does? Do you know what you are actually adjusting? Bump, rebound, both? If both, then in what ratio? Which way do you adjust them to overcome some low speed understeer? What about high speed oversteer? Do you really think that changing the rebound damping, on end or both ends, will affect the overall handling balance? Perhaps you think that soft for street is the go and then hard for track? What if that isn't right?

If you don't know exactly what you are doing, wouldn't you be better off with a shock that has a large window of operating efficiency so that you don't have to adjust them?

Happy New Year

Gary

Thanks Gary, thats good food for thought..

I used to have HKS Hiper-D coilovers, they shook the car too much and used to bounce around too much even on the softest setting. Now have Bilsteins with King Yellow springs (rate unknown). The Bilsteins seem firmer yet more comfortable and handle better but still get a lot of bounce going on so sometimes I wish I could just make it a bit softer at times to handle the crumby streets. I suspect the springs are too stiff so investigating that first but just thought as a possible alternative going with a decent coilover with an in-control unit that can make it easy to experiment with.

All in all, just checking all options and doing some research first before taking it to a suspension place as I am certainly no expert in the field

[sav man]

My mate has Trust/Greddy Shocks and his car is the worst riding car I have ever been in, it jumps all over the road at highway speeds, and at low speeds it shakes your teeth out.

They were put on by the pevious owner in Melb (so not old slogged out Jap 15 yo ones). After experensing them I would never even think about trust/greddy suspention.

[Pezhead]

Oh Darn. I just ordered the Type-S from UAS - so no free in car adjustment for me.

Also check the spring rates. Mine are for a R33 GTR. They come in two spring rate options. I went for the 8F 6R option but you can get a 12F 10R. Sounds like the previous post had the latter.

[Sydneykid]

Thanks Gary, thats good food for thought..

I used to have HKS Hiper-D coilovers, they shook the car too much and used to bounce around too much even on the softest setting. Now have Bilsteins with King Yellow springs (rate unknown). The Bilsteins seem firmer yet more comfortable and handle better but still get a lot of bounce going on so sometimes I wish I could just make it a bit softer at times to handle the crumby streets. I suspect the springs are too stiff so investigating that first but just thought as a possible alternative going with a decent coilover with an in-control unit that can make it easy to experiment with.

All in all, just checking all options and doing some research first before taking it to a suspension place as I am certainly no expert in the field

In the case of most Jap shocks you are only adjusting the rebound damping, hence it will make absolutely zero difference to how harsh it is on impact. All you are adjusting is how fast (not how far) it will recoil after the impact. Some adjusters (very rare) do both rebound and bump, but in a fixed ratio, generally between 10 (rebound) to 1 (bump) and 5 to 1. So they also make very little difference to the impact harshness.

By far the spring rate has the most effect on harshness and keep in mind that the standard springs are around 3 kg/mm. R32/33/34 Skylines are sports cars, so they don't have "soft" spring rates to start off with. What effect do you realistically expect when you are more than trippling the spring rate? A 10 kg/mm spring rate is still going to be a 10 kg/mm spring rate no matter what you do with a shock adjustment. Reducing it by 20% (to 8kg/mm) is hardly going to make a discernable difference.

What's the best spring rate? If you aren't going to lower the car and only use it on the road, then the standard spring rate is pretty much spot on. If you are going to lower it, then the ratio of 20% lower to 20% increase in spring rate is logical. If you are going to use it on the track then ask the tyre manufacturer what effective spring rate they suggest for your selected tyre. You will be hard pressed to find any "R" type tyre that will tolerate an effective rate much over 5kg/mm. As for a road tyre, then 4kg/mm is the maximum I have seen for a tyre that will fit a Skyline.

Happy New Year

Gary