Max. spring rate for Yellow Longstroke Koni's?

[Spitfire]

Cheers lads,

well, the title says pretty much everything I might be lucky enough to get a full set of Yellow Longstroke Konis (as allways hugemegabig thanks to SekiguchiUeno!!!! ) for my crappy 86 and also (again, thanks to Stano ) a contact on a company which makes custom springs (very cheaply). So, with that kind of combination lying in front of me, I would like to ask people who have the experience to tell me how stiff can the Konis go.
I was told that Mux here was driving with 6kg/mm springs, which would be awesome because thats exactly where Im aming

[Mux213]

Hey spitfire,

Yup, got 6kg/mm front and 4.5kg/mm rear. But that is also the reason I swapped my normal koni's for Tokico HTS short strokes.

You can drive with this setup and KONIs just fine, I did so for a long while, however you have to keep in mind that you can run into bump problems and you will have the springs come loose when your car is off the ground.

I would say the max spring rate you can use without having fitment problems would be around 3kg/mm front, 2kg/mm rear but I haven't tried so I wouldn't know for sure.

oldeskewltoy mentioned a nice solution in here:
http://www.aeu86.org/viewtopic/aftermark...3809#68897

I might try that with my rear since I still have koni in the rear.

[Spitfire]

Hey Mux, thanks a lot for the quick reply!

I am aware of the loose-spring problem, but unfourtunetly I dont have a lot of info concerning it. It will sound pretty dumb, but can the spring come loose at all (as in "falling" away)?
Im visiting with my 86 a service station next week whose owner has an 86 and has done exactly what Oldeskewltoy is describing so I will check that out

Thanks one more time!!

[Apolan]

im curious about that too. i've heard ppl talk about the spring-coming loose problem, but never ever ever heard of anybody that would have his rear spring fling away from the "seat" in midst driving..

[Mux213]

Spitfire, Apolan,

On the front its not possible due to the coilover design.

At the rear, it is possible, the reason you've never heard of this happening is that someone needs to do some serious offroading for it to go wrong.

The springs usually are clamped pretty tightly at the top. But I've had once or twice with the car raised, that a spring did fall out. But this was while working on the car with the axle fully down and the springs fully hanging loose.

Under normal driving your spring will always be compressed due to the weight of the car. If you go over a bump to fast and your car comes off the ground the axle doesn't just fall away, your shocks wil take care of that. The opening that gets created isn't enough for the springs to fall out and you should hit the ground way sooner.

But with serious offroading, the added vibrations and the higher risk of being off the ground..

Then again, doing serious offroading with a stiff suspention? You gottah be mental to do that. I'd be more worried about loosing my teeth and breaking my back then my springs coming loose