TargaPaul

Back in the day when I last competed in Autocross......Hawk HP plus and Koni sport yellows were the setup to have. Is that still true today?

edfishjr

Kind of an open-ended question but, my answer would be that, in general, a) brake pads don't matter much in any case in autocross, stock are usually fine, as long as the system is in good working order (and you don't make the mistake of using a race pad that performs poorly cold) and b) no, Koni sport yellows are not the setup "to have" and never were. Koni had/has sport yellow fitments for a lot of cars, which made/makes them the easy button, but the sport has moved way beyond that kind of thinking, at least at a national level.

Sure, the Konis are better than stock, and have the advantage of being relatively cheap. But, I think shocks are very important to modern autocross and that means pretty good money and proper valving for autocross, not road-race. Moderately good shocks are $1.5K a set and really good ones are $4K or more.

I have a set of $1.5K Konis (much better than standard sport yellows) which are pretty decent. (Cars with them have won championships.) But, I also have a set of specially-valved Ohlins ($4K+) that definitely make the car faster.

TargaPaul

What model Koni are they?

And do they make them for my '89 911?

edfishjr

Model 3013, single adjustable, only for Corvette.
My understanding (from a Koni rep) is that they are some sort of hybrid of a sport yellow with some of the racing shock tech incorporated internally, thus the higher cost. I dont know the history, or why they don't offer something similar for other cars, but I expect its all market driven.

Edit: as for brake pads, I like Carbotec "Bobcats", their ceramic street pads, because they are so controllable.
​​​​​For 911 shocks, burglar probably has good info. He had a build thread for his 3.2 Carrera.

burglar

Oh hell, I'm the wrong person. I originally had my original, 30 year old Bilsteins revalved by Elephant racing. Their valving sucked for autocross, especially the rear valving, and they were unwilling to deviate from their canned tunes. I bought some trick double adjustable rears that are pretty good, but it's real hard to dial them in - you need a sensitive butt, an engineering brain, and a methodical test and tune strategy. I'd like to try a LOT more front compression but don't have a **** there.

I'm also of the opinion that 95% of the time it's better to jump in and worry about the driving only. There's enough going on during an AX run that if you can take out worrying about what **** you need to turn after a run, you're better off.

To be honest, especially on stock torsion bars, the Koni yellow should be "close enough." I use them on my other car and they're good enough to win me a couple of trophies in Lincoln. (pardon the horn tooting.) Yeah, I probably could find a few tenths on some double adjustable Ohlins and a lot of testing to dial them in. If you're at the autocross level that you know, not just think, the shocks are holding you back, and have the cash, then it's worth it. I had older Bilsteins on my Mini when I first bought it, and there was an occasional small delay in the rear settling down in transition that I had to drive around. With the Konis I was able to dial that out.

Also be careful, the rear shock should be the same on all 911s, but the front strut is different depending on how the car was optioned from the factory. The Bilsteins are easiest to spot, they're inverted (shock body up top) I'm not as familiar with the Koni/Sachs/Boge options.

edfishjr

I knew burglar had good info.

Info of the "this didn't work" variety is often the most valuable.

If I'd never had the Ohlins after running the Koni 3013s I wouldn't have known that the Konis weren't perfect. They were certainly a big jump up from the horrible stock shocks. It took going back and forth between Koni and Ohlins a couple of times to really understand how and why the Ohlins were faster and how to take advantage of them. Yes, I also treated many (all) local events as test sessions for a long time.

The last event of last year I was back on the Konis, with new RE71Rs, and I knew how hard I was working to try to get the car to perform like it can on the Ohlins. The difference in time? No real idea, but certainly burglar is right in that we are only talking about 10ths. But, given the intense competition I face even locally, 10ths mean a lot to me.

To give you an example, at that last event I paxed 5th of about 90. Of the four in front, 3 were recent national champs. The one who wasn't a national champ was first.

To paraphrase Bill Maher, when are old white guys going to get a break in this country sport?