Carlos13

This thread is manna for me as I have just had ASTs with 50/40 springs, Noltec topmounts, 22mm rear ARB, camber bolts and Whiteline settings dialled in. Very interested to see what drops out as I don't have as much time to experiment with the settings.

Only had a short drive so far (car gone in for seats & cage to be fitted) but initial findings on a fast-ish A road blast are very encouraging. Car seems to corner much flatter (as you would expect) and does not give any hint that the tyres (R888) will slip, except for once when I think I went over a bump mid-corner and the front skipped a bit, momentarily went light.

The car does jiggle about more, but the ride is more than acceptable, this is 6 clicks from soft all round (so I am told, I haven't fiddled yet myself).

My car is a weekend/track day warrior though, not as hardcore as Graham's . Its a 99V UK classic.

911

Carlos: I'm @ 7 clicks front, and 5 clicks rear from Max Soft.

Hope the 60/50 springs will help a bit more.

Keep on trying the damping setting until it suits you/car/local raods/driving 'style' etc.
We are all different!

Graham.

T-uk

it would be interesting if you could try 60 front 40 rear , if your just finding the front rolls a bit when leaned on mid bend.

Wonder Wagon

How big is that turbo on the porker

ZEN Performance

If you are having to go to such high spring rates, the dampers are not doing their job properly. I am on 40/40 F/R with my EXE-TC WR suspension, i can dial it from perfectly comfortable road ride to razor sharp. My (passenger) experience of the AST dampers is that they are to soft, especially slow compression damping.

Paul

911

Thanks to all.
This is part of the work with PowerStation, try and find the 'ideal' (for me).
After the runs at Shelsley the balance felt just so much better than at Loton.
With so few bends and so few runs it is hard to judge every situation, especially as I'm there to race for position in a serious way.
Chasing the Championships is the reason to have the car!

I'm not sure if i can swop springs without (seriously) affecting the geometry too much.
I wouls like to swop them myself so to play tunes quickly to see what happens.
I am a little brainwashed in the advice from Whitelaine 3 years back that the rears should be 80% of the fronts.
The car corners very flat and looking at the state of the Kumho's today after the runs they are working VERY hard (right across the tread), especially the rears which are well frazzled compared to the fronts.
Paul: at long last a decent start! The difference in 'seat of the pants' feeling from 2.19 sec starts to 2.03 is really noticeable.
The EVO can pull 1.96's but has traction control...

Trial and error, but the hill climb game is very different to Track/Drag.

Nice to get comments as ever

Graham.

Floyd

iTrader: (9)

Paul, I wished you have come out for a drive on the Sunday when it dried. I'd played with the settings and tyres pressures. It all came together and it was totally different to the Sat lap with you.

If I had the money I know that your dampers would be on the wish list along with the mythical SS set up, if they ever appear, for the next step up but for now and at my skill level, the AST seems to do the trick. They are an entry 'coil over' cost level package, which is hard to ignore. If only I could have got sponsored by PS

F

ZEN Performance

I'm not saying the ASTs are poor, but you need to consider the 'Ring is no billiard table. If you are cranked up near max damping at the 'Ring, what do you do if you go somewhere like Bedford?

It seems to me, that as they come out the box right now, that they are very road/comfort oriented. The KW units that powerstation used to champion seemed rather better from what I have heard (I know of about 5 people with the AST right now), and before that they were selling the Bilstein kit as the best thing since sliced bread.

It's good to some some real development work being done though.

Paul

tyresqueal

Hi Graham

Keep up the good work - this thread is seriously interesting and informative - I can't wait till the day you stuff that EVO.

If you do a climb in scotland let me know and i'll be there to cheer you on!

John Stevenson

He appears to be to frightened to come to Doune

911

It's those Notherners again!

I got some serious ribbing yesterday at Shelsley about doing doune next year.
It is about 5 1/2 hour trip which many break half way from the 'soft' Midlands (),
But I would rather scoot-up in one go.

The armco lined Tunnel sounds tricky, but maybe I'll get a pass-out from the Boss.

Other awkward bit is that I am insured for 3000 miles a year,and a trip to Doune is a long way and eats into that.

Anyway, you never know.

As to stuffing the EVO, over heard the real estimated BHP of that car yesterday, and it was 'a bit over 400', now I am depressed; it must be me that is the problem! OR, that Dave Wallis and Co are right in that the engine is not 407 bhp (sorry Floyd) and about 380/360 instead?
Thrashed the car to an inch of death over the weekend, you should see the condition of the tyres, especially the rears..and the box is still perfect after a lot of 5500 rpm/dump the clutch starts for 2 years now.

Interesting comments from Paul on the AST's.

Hill climbing in the Midlands is very much like driving flat-out up a country lane knowing that there is nobody coming the other way.

Road going suppleness and fast changing surface irregularities/cambers directions are the factors, not a fast sweeping curve in sight!

The AST's are miles better than the AVO's in several respects, and the 60/50 springs will be interesting to compare for my purposes.
The 50/40 springs on the car now are off the Bug/blob eye car spec which are a bit stiffer for the heavier car so I'm slightly stiff over classic levels now.
Can you change the springs without disturbing the geometry/top mounts?

A bonus is they also dont go bang/crash and 'boing' from the rear....

Graham.

Carlos13

AFAIK if you specify "track" springs you get 50/40 - even for a classic. If you don't specify you get 40/30. As usual there is every chance I am wrong!

911

50/40 may be the perfect combination for the track too! Going 60/50 is to find if this is over the top or not.
Sometimes you need to go 'beyond' to realise you had the best compromise.
This is the purpose of the exercise, so Customers can specify their needs and PowerStation have background to relay to the Customer.

I am the director for R&D at my company, so this is all second nature to me.

Graham.

Floyd

iTrader: (9)

Paul, as I have a young family I also need the road comfort for the few times that I need to do family trips in the car.

I cranked the damping up to 9/8 from a max of 12 so there was a bit to go. If you need another classic to do some more development with your kit then I'm open to offers

F

Powerstation

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zen Performance

I'm not saying the ASTs are poor, but you need to consider the 'Ring is no billiard table. If you are cranked up near max damping at the 'Ring, what do you do if you go somewhere like

Paul:

I have never sold or "championed" a KW damper in my life.



What do you mean "seemed rather better from what I have heard" maybe you should try them first hand before commenting!



We bought £30k's worth of Bilsteins and ended up sending them back because of incorrect valving. When we got them back they had crazy spring rates which bilstein refused to change, 80Nmm F and 70Nmm rear! So we sent them back again!



Of course the dampers are road orientated they are road dampers. But we do have the facility to re-valve as necessary.



We are currently working on these race dampers which we hope to have on Grahams car in the next few months for him to test. These will retail for around £2k





Rich

Floyd

iTrader: (9)

Rich, I'll keep playing with the road dampers until I feel I need more performance. I'm happy now but will be back later to try different options if I think I can go quicker.

F

dowser

For what it's worth, standard KW variant 3 coil-overs also come with springs that are too soft for serious track work (unless you only drive Nordschleif!). But I've been running my old ones with uprated springs for 3 or so years now (and I bought them 2nd hand). They've been rebuilt once (free of charge), and need it again now.

911

Do you mean quicker on the Ring or real roads in the UK?

I think you have found the AST's to be very nice on UK roads and a bit beyond as i have.
The damping settings do seem to be linear in action; that is, click 7 to 9 from soft gives a similar step change as 3 to 5.
It would be good to see a plot off the dyno rig of the damping screw effect on a given spring rate and deflection.

Anyway, so much better than my previous damper units.

Graham.

dowser

He-He - that's the other thing. Real roads in Switzerland are much smoother than their UK counterparts! My current set-up would be pants on an average UK road, and parts of the Ring too.

I guess your hill climbs are held on real roads anyhow - so you're after the best road set-up. Mine is optimised for smoothish track work and will regularly grab air on real bumpy b-roads.....was quicker on this type of surface with adjustable Koni dampers and Eibach springs.....but then got left for dead on track.... Everything's a compromise

Richard

ZEN Performance

i can only assume the few people that said to me they bought KW suspension from you must have been confused, they were very happy with whatever they had though!






I can think of a few people at least with ASTs that would be interested in different valving, how much does it cost?

The race dampers look very nice, is that a £2k retail including VAT?

Paul

simo

I am more than happy with the AST's on my car & at Beford in Feb they performed excellent once I have found the correct damping rate (10/9 iirc). Ask Arron Bird as he witnessed it & was suitabily impressed. On the ring as Floyd has said, they were spot on, again once the correct damping had been found (it will be easier next time as I now know where to start)

(it even takes bbs corners well )

911

So; we seem to have an International Consortium that agrees that the Road Version is adjustable to a wide range of tarmac events/roads, even if we all have slightly different damping positions (no surprise).

Excellent!

Keep it coming. Richard; you are spot-on with the hill climbing game in the UK!

Graham

DuncanG

Thats interesting Paul, what made you think particularily it was the slow-compression that was soft?

ZEN Performance

Duncan,

Pehaps the damping overall was on the low side. Floyd's car for one did some to wallow a little after being thrown into a bend. Small ruts and bumps in the road were better coped with than my Ledas for sure. When cranking my Leda's up to sort the handling it was a bit skittish on rough roads with lots of noise.

EXE-TC on the other hand is perhaps too hard in slow damping as it tends to follow some features in the road a little too rigidly, but then I guess this is what gives it the increased stiffness in corners. AST just feels "different", seemed better on Simon's V8 than Floyds initially, but it was harder on Simon's car than when I went in Floyd's.

Compared to much of the ultra stiff japanese stuff, all the Leda, AST and KW and so on feels great! Trying to map a car with Apexi N1 on (I assume) hard settings was impossible, touchpad on laptop was useless and I had to hold the screen with one hand even on smooth roads.

Paul

DuncanG

I'd agree that damping is on the low side with the ASTs, and Floyd is running the soft springs, with the stiffer springs its worse of course. The adjuster affects primarily the slow settings as you'd expect from a bleed valve and I thought they were quite good on body-control when turned-up but I never had them on track to push them.

Tramping-on on a 'washboard' type surface wasn't confidence inspiring though and bump-control was sadly lacking. However they are comfy at lower speeds as small bumps and ruts are absorbed without resistance. For me the fast settings were much too soft and those were virtually unaffected by the adjuster - I tried from full soft to full hard.

I tried upping the spring rate to 60/50 (as Graham wants to do) in an effort to reduce bottoming but they then became grossly underdamped.

It'll be interesting to see if PS ever do the re-valving they say is an option. When I requested it I was told the valving was perfect and I didn't know what I was talking about - ho-hum.

Floyd

iTrader: (9)

I need to raise the ride height a touch for speed bumps. Will this affect the goemetery settings for say 5-8mm?

Paul, you are correct in that the car felt wallowy and nervous. I didn't like it! It was completely different on the Sunday. Not sure if they had settled in or whether the higher damping and me remembering what to do made the difference?

F

DaveW

I'd be interested in the re-valve option too, depending on the cost.

I'm running the softer springs and have just raised my ride height to try and stop the car bottoming out on sharp dips in the road (yet to try if this is has worked). The roads in Cumbria and South Scotland are not the smoothest but my UK99 never bottomed out. Maybe I should just go back to UK99 suspension. One of the reasons I went for the AST's was that they were road biased.

Aztec Performance Ltd

iTrader: (234)

Interesting stuff Graham.

These hill-climb routes...do people have many offs? I mean would it be practical for someone to compete in their sole runaround car? Costs?

Bob

DaveW

Floyd,

Increasing the ride height will reduce the negative camber. Can't quite get my head around if it will affect the toe (my brain is not accustomed to thinking in 3D).

Dave.

911

Changing the ride height will change all the settings, BUT, so do additional passengers, luggage in the boot, same luggage in the back seat area etc.
As ever, a compromise.

If any car hits the bump stops then it is the springs, or the ride height static setting or poor design 'internally'.

On my 50/40 set-up the undulations are easy on the roads (A.B/Motorways), but if you scoot into long flowing high speed depressions (the Ring?) then the damping rate will not save you, the spring rate has to resist the downward accelleration. Too light a spring and too low a ride setting and thump; exciting at 100 mph on the bump stops..

The hill climb track (remember my application in all this thread) is about 12 feet at it's narrowest and all are based on old tracks/routes in the countryside generally.
Shelsley Walsh was a shale track up to the 1950's, and is 100 years old last week-end.
Loton Park is a converted deer park that was once a munitions site in WW2...

The tracks are smooth, pitch and dive everywhere and can be lined in tyre walls/armco/railway sleepers and ravines The car control in the chassis is critical.
I realy feel these AST's meet my spec, and if the 60/50 ratio isn't good then they will come off and I'll go back to 50/40.
The car is now done at PowerStation, and I'll collect it tomorrow at the Open Day there (hope to do a power run there too...that might be dissapointing to many except Floyd!)

Bob: You can compete in anything at a hill climb except a van (!) There are classes for all, BUT, there are many intricate regulations too.

You know the spec of my car, and it is one of the few in the class totally to the Blue Book.

Typical costs are:

Race clothing (helmet/suit) £350
Car prep for the race max £1 (yes) Race numbers and a timing splitter + a few odds and sods
Race entry: about £90, but one is £108 (Prescott)
Petrol/burgers and coffee: about £30. You can camp in most venues for about £6

A typical race weekend costs about £150 for me.

You practice 2 maybe 3 times on saturday (each run is about 60 seconds)
You race twice on Sunday.

Thus track time is about 5 minutes for the $$$!

Wear on the car is very very low unless a tree jumps out and hits you.
There are some offs, and some are taken away in the Air Ambulance.

It is very easy to get it wrong and there is little protection.
Weekend after this bank hol is a major meeting at Prescott close to Gotherington, Cheltenham.

why not pop over for a chat and a looksee?
They do a driver's school day there which is well worth doing to get an insite into the real deal.

Gasp..

Graham