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[Sandalwood]

The adjustments you can make on any adjustable damper will make far more of a difference than any valving apart from the ratio between compression and rebound per adjustment click on one ways. If you can afford it always go for three ways as you can adjust the compression and rebound independently. To do that on one ways you need to re-valve. You can also adjust the rake value to affect under-oversteer, but this is probably best done by camber adjustment. Also, the suspension setup of a car comes down a lot to personal preference. e.g all the spring rates mentioned are too soft for my preference.

Gotcha. Most of my suspension tuning experience comes from the rather unusual tuning for autocross, where custom variable-rate valving with limited adjustment is all we could get away with in my class. When the options open up a bit I am not quite sure what to do. Mid-engine performance tuning for aggressive street use differs somewhat from tuning a Miata to maximize the utilization of slicks on a parking lot in the first two gears. I only have two-way adjustment on my tarmac-rally Evo VIII, and I'll be the first to admit I do not have it adjusted correctly yet. Learning gradually.

 

[Honcho]

Gotcha. Most of my suspension tuning experience comes from the rather unusual tuning for autocross, where custom variable-rate valving with limited adjustment is all we could get away with in my class. When the options open up a bit I am not quite sure what to do. Mid-engine performance tuning for aggressive street use differs somewhat from tuning a Miata to maximize the utilization of slicks on a parking lot in the first two gears. I only have two-way adjustment on my tarmac-rally Evo VIII, and I'll be the first to admit I do not have it adjusted correctly yet. Learning gradually.

A lot depends on use case as well. e.g I've tuned my nitron r1s to give me far more rebound damping than standard. My standard fast roads rebounded uncontrollably down b-roads. I could slow this down by adding more clicks, but then the compression would be too hard/harsh. I re-valved them so now they can be compliant on the bumps and still controlled/planted on rebound. Now the car is so much more confidence inspiring on bumpy/twisty roads. I'm still struggling with sharper turn-in but I think thats a lack of front camber issue which there doesn't seem to be any cost effective solutions for.

 

[papadop88]

He's correct about damping behavior altering ride quality as well as spring rate. I'm more worried about any change in understeer behavior and forward weight shift. Shock valving changes can certainly change perception, but the higher rate will also affect the genuine weight shift. I have a tendency to dig the brakes pretty hard on corner entry to help the front bite. I'm not sure I want the front any stiffer for fear it may resist transfer. I'll wait for more scientific folks to do a little testing before I dive in...My fears may be unfounded, and maybe not.

Call Shinoo at Inokinetic and ask him about the Modals and the technical stuff. Aside from the Modal folks themselves, he'll know the most about them and he knows Lotus cars inside and out. The M1s Shinoo just sent me were specifically designed for Shinoo's shop Emira in conjunction with the Modal engineers so I assume that's as scientific as it will get with the M1s for this application. There was a delay in getting his Emira so he decided to sell them to me.

I guess there's a reason the engineers and Shinoo felt firming up the front and softening the rear made sense. I'm going to trust them on that set up because I don't know anything about that stuff, to be honest.

I was just looking to lower the car to my liking without making it a harsh ride, so the moment you get into understeer and weight shifts, revalves, etc. you lose me. I'm too stupid to understand this stuff. LOL.