Matt this is driving me crazy because I know something or other fits..............with my memory this week it could be that the inserts that fit are off of RX-7's or a friggin 68 Skoda for all I know.

Doubting Thomas????? Took me a minute to get that.............I'm having to deal with getting the tranny done for our 25ft box van at work and it's making me more neurotic than usuall...............anybody seen my med's?

Tom

In case anybody cares, I thought I'd post this about rabbit Bilstein sport inserts to give you an idea of how they might work for you. For the archives:

Insert Length: 12.5
Insert Diameter: 1.5
Piston Compressed: 13.875
Piston Extended: 20.125
Piston Travel 6.25

Quote:

"We" is referring to myself and my dad, we have three 1200's between us.

What the hell is a "doubting Thomas?"

Can we stay on topic here? This could be an important thread once one of us digs up some more info.

Sundat do you have the ID on the stock 1200 strut yet? I know Koni's referance chart gives dimensions on some of the inserts vs a specific application as does Spax.

Tom

Yeah I just measured the inside diameter today of the stock 1200 strut tube. It was roughly 1.55 inches. A 1.5 inch strut would definitely fit, which means the bilsteins should work. It would be nice to have Koni's with decent valving. Anyone know the valving numbers for the NLA 1200 koni strut inserts? I'm going to look up the rabbit bilstein valving numbers to see if they can be compared.

My dad decided to go and buy some rabbit KYB inserts for his street car. Since he's a machinist making strut tube spacers to fit the shorter insert bodies isn't a problem. It looks like no cutting down of the strut tube will be necessary. The cap nut that holds the insert in needs to be drilled out, and so does the strut bearing, But it all seems do-able.

It's interesting, the rabbit insert is much shorter but the shaft length is about the same and seems to have similar travel to stock.

Also, I got confirmation from another person online that the rabbit bilsteins are 1.507 inches in diameter. This probably gives us the choice of three different rabbit bilsteins available: the stiff "sports" the softer "heavy duty" and the OE style "touring." I think thats pretty great.

I was looking in the bilstein race catalog for the valving for the VW rabbit race insert they sell (yes, that makes for a total of four available rabbit bilstein inserts) It is biased quite a bit towards rebound dampening.

Its listed as 270/100 for rebound/compression. That may be an indication of how the other 74-84 vw rabbit/jetta/scirocco bilsteins are valved.

If you wanted to save the stock 1200 strut housing for some reason these could be revalved by bilstein to suit the 1200, assuming they are 1.5 inch diameter like the other bilsteins. Part #v36-0059

If you're going racing I came across these reasonable priced double adjustable Koni's, which might fit if you welded 1.75 tubes on your struts. I'm starting to really appreciate the whole double adjustability thing. you can adjust them to suit a wide range of cars.

koni double adjustables

I've also found that superbike rear shocks are double adjustable, and several people are putting them on cars for the grassroots motorsports $2000 challenge. I found a chart listing stock spring rates for these rear shocks between 350 pounds (98-00 suzuki gsxr) to 740 pounds/inch (suzuki hyabusa).
These go for $40 each on ebay, used. If they fit the rear of the 1200 that would be great.

What would be good shock/strut valving for a street/autox 1200?

dbl post

Well I'll give away a secret; I'm using the old Tokico green non adjustable inserts in the 280ZX struts and on the rear I use the really old non-gas bottom and twist to adjust the rebound Koni Shocks to make minor changes to the transeint handling..........that's it. Or for the rare rain race I disconnect the rear bar. Note that Tom Neeley, who builds National Winning tube frame GT cars for a living, for years ran a tub 510 with non adjustable shocks.He new what dampers and springs the car needed set-up wise and stuck to it.
If you read "inside Indy car Racing" there is 100 pages on how dampers work........then when you read Carrol Smith's "Tune to Win" (which is the bible of race car set up) when it comes to dampers he says "there is nothing you need to know because , Koni comes to every race" what he was getting at is, if race teams have a shock engineer they're more complicated then people think.

Double adjustables have a purpose but unless you are attempting to be a SCCA National Champ don't bother...................I encounter a lot of students at track days who've screwed up the handling with double adjustables. They've usaully got the rebound cranked up so their car is waaaaaay darty and the compression mismatched to the point of the car being really skatey over the bumps

So I would go with one of 2 options ;

1. call Koni send them the exsisting struts and they can make up a perfect fit.......probably pricey.

2. Go with KYB or Bilstein get them valved for the 1200 , all you need is something that you can stiffen up(overall) for a local autocross then run them back to full soft for street driving.

Tom

Here's a great article that backs up your comments about adjsutable shocks. The writer also reccomends bilsteins.

http://www.wincom.net/trog/autocross_secrets6.html