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OK Koni people, Boiler, Zzyzx, & others, I want your feedback on konis.

My baseline: stock springs & shocks, 25f/19r bars, -1.5f/-.7r camber, 0f/0r toe. Clearly not high perf but working ok in sts this past year while I learned to drive a bit, comparable to some stock class Celicas with crash bolts.

Recent change: found a front spring I like, stock RSX!! Contrary to what people think, it does not raise the car, it's exactly stock height on my car. From what I gather, however, the RSX struts must be different in length and would screw up ride height on a civic. Anyway, I wanted a 200ish lb/in spring with close to stock height (to stay off the bump stops and drive on occasional dirt, snow, etc) and this is it (reported to be 201lb/in). I installed the front springs only, to confirm ride height and see how stiff they were going to be before changing the rear springs.

Result: Keeping in mind that the stock front shock is underdamped for the RSX spring, and I still have stock rear spring/shock, the ride is pretty firm and somewhat "jiggly" so my initial thought was that stiffer springs might not suit me. After driving it more, I find that the front end rolls through big dips like they're not there, just sucks them up. In fact, the front rides much better than the back, which feels pretty abrubt on bigger bumps and I'm thinking it's the rear that's making it "jiggly". Just drove it over some short speed bumps, expecting the front to smash pretty hard and it was the opposite, front sucked it up perfectly but the rear bounced over it hard, like it bottomed or there was too much compression damping. I can't see a 2" bump bottoming the rear shock, so I'm guessing the damping on the stock rear shocks is pretty funky? I've seen some RSX posts complaining about the rear damping being pretty far off (Jasoox). My guess is that the stock shock isn't so good with the high motion ratio at the rear.

So what about the Koni Yellow? Is it going to have a better compression response to "smooth out" the rear?? I realize that my current suspension is way off in terms of spring match/shock damping but now I'm really curious how much better Konis might be for the rear of our cars.

BTW, I plan to use match an Eibach 375lbx2.5" spring on a koni coilover sleeve/koni yellow in the rear with front koni inserts.

Cheers,
Chris

 
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Use a stiffer spring than that (like maybe 450-500). Anyways, Koni stock valving is good to 600 lb-in springs, you should be able to dial them anyway you want, then they can re-valve, shorten, lengthen, etc..... basically do anything you want with them. There's also a set of double adjustables out there. Spencer found them, but I'm not sure how much info he got on them.

 
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Ok, I'm sold! Onward with the project and the $. I'm thinking that the stock rear is most likely underdamped in rebound so it goes over the bump, compresses the spring, and rebounds much higher than it should with proper damping. Hopefully the Koni will ride better even on stiffer springs...

 
Rep Power: 380

The Double adjustible for the front is the 8611 Universal Racing Strut Insert, the install is a lot more involved and since its officially a "race" damper Koni recomended that they get checked out about every 3 years to make sure the valving is still precice. They also said that to revalve/convert the rear yellows to be DA to match the fronts. BTW the tech said the fronts should run under $250 per damper. So for some where around $1000 you could have double adjustible dampers front and rear.

Other then that, Koni also recomended getting the RSX rear dampers for compitition as its more agressivly valved then the Civic's rear konis.

 
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The Koni RSX rear fits the civic? I remember reading something about problems with civic kybs needing mods to fit into the rsx (maybe to wide at the mount?) so is there any custom work to fit the RSX to the civic? It sounds like a pretty good damper choice to handle higher spring rates in the rear.