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Most people do not know this, and it can create frustration you don't even understand youre dealing with. Setting your shocks and keeping track of tuneups on them with different track conditions is as important as tuning your EFI or boost controller, or maybe more.
Mark Menscer from Menscer Motorsports instilled this tip on me years ago and I have since seen people doing this incorrectly.
When setting shocks on compression or extension one must understand how a shock works. Flow in the shock and valving is controlled by a needle and seat style valve. That means when you turn the knob all the way clockwise or to the right (tight), the needle is sitting in the seat and basically eliminating any possibility of flow. When you turn the shock to counter clockwise (left or loose) it opens the needle out of the seat. The problem lies there, because how loose is loose? After a certain point the flow is open as open gets. Additionally shocks have a different count of "full loose" on nearly every shock, even in the same set. There may be 1-4 extra clicks loose on one shock vs another of the same brand and manufacturer.
Because open is open, it is hard to verify how far you are closing the valve, vs the opposite of loosening from tight. We know that full tight is full closed off. Which becomes our only repetitive tuning baseline. For this reason all of your notes, all of your baselines, settings, etc. should be counted from full tight on extension of the shock as well as compression. Otherwise we cannot verify the shocks are the same from side to side.
We try to make it to as many races as possible during the year. When I go to a race I try to be as helpful as possible to our customers in helping them improve, go faster, be successful. MANY MANY times when I crawl under a car to check shock settings I find that settings are a few clicks different from side to side, and it is because they are adjusting from full loose. Often times you can just square things up (go full tight from side to side and back to the same setting one of the sides run) and the car will instantly perform better because the two sides of the rear aren't trying to do different things. Remember, 1 or 2 clicks can be the difference between a car working and not, no joke.
Another note, your shock settings will not typically work in every condition from one day to the next. For this reason its a great idea to keep a log of conditions, shock settings, 60' times at different tracks you go to. Even if you don't have a weather station or a track meter, jot notes down like 100 derees (off your cellphone weather app), greasy track, radial prep/no prep etc. That way the next time you roll into a track and atleast want a good place to start you have it. This is essentially what the pro tuners and good racers do. They have "tuneups" for everything which reduces the learning curve and allows them to start leaning on their power faster and sooner.
If you haven't checked out Menscer Motorsports yet, they are highly recommended by us. We do not sell their products but here is a link. They will valve your shocks perfectly for your application and send you a tuneup sheet that will shorten your learning curve immensely!
www.menscermotorsports.com/