Floorman279

iTrader: (11)

From searching, you find that konis with good springs is a popular and reliable street and mild strip setup. You will also find searches about coilovers and how they are great and help the rest of your suspension work better, but cant find anything about when konis with good springs are favorable over coilovers, and vise versa. So here we go.....when do you choose coilovers, and when do you choose something else?

JD_AMG

Sounds like you have things a little mixed up.
Koni sports and STR.T's are handling/street shocks, not something you want to buy for drag racing. Although you can drag race with whatever shock you want, a drag shock would be more ideal, however wont hold a candle to the street ability, ride or handling of a gas charged sport shock like a Koni. Its the way they are valved and no amount of "adjustments" will change that.
As for adjustable coilovers, the only difference between those and a traditional shock/spring combo is you can adjust height with them. They are not magic and not any different than if you had the same shock, spring and ride height with a shock/spring combo.
To top things off not all coilovers are the same. Non-gas charged Drag coilovers like QA1, strange, afco and viking etc will ride, handle, and feel vastly different than gas charged handling coilovers like ridetech, KW, UMI/strano custom afco coilovers, penski, race bilstiens etc. How the shock itself adjusts is different (changing with piston speed or not) and how the dyno curve looks (how the shock acts) is vastly different.
Now that that is out of the way the only time an adjustable coilover is "needed" is when you want to adjust to the specific height you want. You can also buy coilover sleeves for the front of our shocks and an adjustable spring perch for the rear axle from ground control to convert a tradition shock/spring combo to height adjustable coilovers.

UMI Performance

iTrader: (77)

Hello, JD gave some good info.

What are your plans for the car? Street, drag, handling?

The benefits of coilovers in all driving types is height adjustment and easy spring rate/length changes. The spring changing because more important on a drag car and a handling car. As we test as a company we continuously change and try different spring rates, the coilover kit we designed allows us to do this with ease.

If you can supply some more info we are happy to help.

Floorman279

iTrader: (11)

Street car that is more geared towards spirited street driving, but will see the Strip from time to time. Im ok with feeling most of the bumps in the road, in exchange for a better feel in the corners, however dont want the car to feel like its goona bang snd rattle apart. I would give up some comfort for mild gains in the corners. But still something that isnt goona completely eat times at the track.

UMI Sales

iTrader: (1)

Do you have a budget in mind?

If you want top notch performance without losing ride quality.....

http://umiperformance.com/catalog/in...Path=7_435_439

There's some guys here on the forum that will attest to our UMI/Strano set-up and what it brings to the table.

Craig

Floorman279

iTrader: (11)

Under 1500 for sure for the shocks and springs. Thats why i was considering konis

Ragna

Can I ask you about my car in pm or on here if OP doesn't mind?

UMI Sales

iTrader: (1)

You can Pm me or better yet give me a call here at the shop. 814-343-6315 ext 101.

Craig

smitty2919

I have Koni Sport SA's with strano springs. I use mine for DD and autocross/eventual road racing.

I would have spent the money on the UMI setup vs what I have now IF UMI offered their CO kit back then. That being said, I like the koni/strano setup as it works well for me and obviously much better than stock. Would I spend the money to replace my setup with the UMI CO? No. I can't justify the cost. I would look into converting my shocks to accept a CO spring though.

IMO, CO really shine with ability to adjust spring rates to suite your driving. Ride height adjustment is nice but eventually you will find ONE height that you like and most likely never change it. Another benefit is corner balancing with CO (assuming you have adj sway bar end links). If you are not into racing enough to care about corner balancing, then forget that I mentioned that.

The Koni/Strano setup is a good "bolt in and go" upgrade that you will immediately notice and like.

trackbird

iTrader: (4)

One last benefit of coilovers. Spring rates, lots and lots of available spring rates and they are even fairly inexpensive. I'm running the UMI/Strano coil over kit on my personal car. Over the winter I'm going to increase the spring rate a bit and do some testing (I'm hoping to get this car out to a few autocross events next spring). I'm not locked into any particular spring rate and the springs are "standard" springs that you can order from UMI/Strano or find at most places that sell chassis parts for racing.

And, once you convert the Koni setup to take a coil over spring, you're pretty close to the price for the coilover kit (give or take a bit).

AnotherWs6

iTrader: (17)

How do you do this? And can it be done for the fron and rear? I have BMR springs and yellow konis. Are you saying I can convert these shocks to accept and run coil over springs?

BMR Sales2

iTrader: (40)

We are still offering the sale special on our Koni Yellow shocks. I also have special packages on them with our traditional lowering springs with 550/160 rates, and we also have our new handling specific springs with 725/210 rates. This would be an ideal pairing for a budget street car with some aggressive cornering in mind

We also offer the full Viking Coilover setup with your choice of spring rates as well. A lot of it comes down to personal preference and ride height. The Vikings will offer more valving adjustment and ride height adjustability as well.

There is a lot of discussion over what is better in a handling application. While the Vikings have a wider range of adjustment they are a non gas charged shock so they are proned to aeration with prolonged use like on a road course. The Konis are a gas charged and are usually better for longer usage and high heat abuse.

Sam Strano

iTrader: (41)

Somehow things get twisted when folks think "coil-overs" are magic. They can offer some advantages over a traditional set of springs and shocks. But there are tradeoffs too.

On the most basic level. You have shocks, and springs. You can get different levels of dampers, some better than others. Those dampers can mount differently and may or may not be advantageous to your needs. Obviously if you deem it important to be able to fiddle with your ride height, coil-overs are something to consider. BUT again, not all shocks are equal, and them being coil-over doesn't make them necessarily all that good. So you have to weigh costs vs. quality vs. performance vs. price.

Bluntly, there are some I'd never use. There are some that are great. There are others that are in between. We went though a lot of valving changes, and continue to fiddle with things. The stuff I did with UMI is pretty high end vs. things like Viking and QA1. Very different mounting, spring quality, shock design, valving. BTW, remember that I carry them too, they are available from both Strano Performance Parts and UMI. Take your pick between the valving/setup guy or the builder. We each brings things to the table, and I"m a full UMI dealer too so if you are after other things at the same time, I've got that covered.

What we were going for, was something more premium than Viking and the like, but without a huge pricetag.

Koni's and my springs. Well those are just proven, and work, and offer a lifetime warranty. And I stand by the product. The rates work, they've won more than one SCCA Championship. I feel no need to change my springs, let alone making running changes every few years looking for an answer. Some things are pretty well known, and in this case it's the weight of the cars, the damping, the way the springs interact with that stuff, and the Koni front bumpstops which is part of the reason we don't need to get so nuts on spring rate. And the result is a good ride over bumps.

There are limits. The UMI/Strano stuff frankly ride a bit better due to more working travel in compression and the mono-tube damper.

But there is no magic in the fact the rears are coil-over, that doesn't in itself make for any performance gains vs. a spring on the axle, just makes for easier mounting solutions, though it takes up room and things can get a bit tight with other parts added down there that aren't exactly stock.

Can you convert Koni to coil-over? Yes, in front, but not the rear. You can get ride height adjustment back there though. However as Kevin mentioned by the time you do all that you have something getting close to the stuff we worked on, and frankly is a far less polished product in the Ground Control Conversion and with stock rubber mounts and rear springs that can come loose in droop. Seems maybe someone was asking if you can have the height adjustment with a full sized set of lowering springs. The answer is no, not with the Ground Control conversion on Koni. Sorry.

Clear as mud?