As posted a little over a year ago now, I have fitted my car with a set of Koni FSD dampers and had the geometry set up at Center Gravity. It took a couple of days to get the car to my satisfaction, partly due to some additional components which needed to be replaced due to wear and partly due to the difficulty of setting the car's front toe to allow the steering wheel to be absolutely correctly aligned when the car is driving "straight ahead".
After the effort expended I was extremely pleased with the car's handling and composure, and very satisfied with Chris Franklin's approach to setting the car up. (Chris is the owner at CG and is the person who does the work on the cars.)
I recently noticed however that the front tyres were wearing rather more on the inside edges that I would have expected given the mileage - which is about 8,000 since the geometry check. I duly booked the car in at CG for a further check and, after a thorough review of the car's geometry settings and some thought on the problem, it seemed likely that the steering dampers (both new units with less than 10K miles on them) were allowing the front wheels to toe-out under braking. This line of thought was further supported by the fact that the car was actually quite difficult to set in terms of toe, with a perfect setting seemingly moving after a 10 mile test drive on no less than three occasions.
I therefore suggested that we should lock up the steering dampers, and these were duly welded into a fixed position.
Result - the toe setting was able to be dialled in easily, and didn't move at all after the test drive. Moreover, there was absolutely no detectable difference in terms of steering feel, vibration or harshness.
I have to say that following this experience I am rather sceptical of the benefits of the steering dampers and would be interested to hear of others' experiences of them in relation to the setup of their cars' geometry.
After the effort expended I was extremely pleased with the car's handling and composure, and very satisfied with Chris Franklin's approach to setting the car up. (Chris is the owner at CG and is the person who does the work on the cars.)
I recently noticed however that the front tyres were wearing rather more on the inside edges that I would have expected given the mileage - which is about 8,000 since the geometry check. I duly booked the car in at CG for a further check and, after a thorough review of the car's geometry settings and some thought on the problem, it seemed likely that the steering dampers (both new units with less than 10K miles on them) were allowing the front wheels to toe-out under braking. This line of thought was further supported by the fact that the car was actually quite difficult to set in terms of toe, with a perfect setting seemingly moving after a 10 mile test drive on no less than three occasions.
I therefore suggested that we should lock up the steering dampers, and these were duly welded into a fixed position.
Result - the toe setting was able to be dialled in easily, and didn't move at all after the test drive. Moreover, there was absolutely no detectable difference in terms of steering feel, vibration or harshness.
I have to say that following this experience I am rather sceptical of the benefits of the steering dampers and would be interested to hear of others' experiences of them in relation to the setup of their cars' geometry.
