How to adjust coilover damping

So you've got your new shiny coilovers for your car. The spring preload is set on them as per the instructions and they’re all installed on your car. You like the height but how do you set coilover damping?

Firstly the best thing to do is check the instructions. Certain coilover brands do state there is a run-in period where the damper should be set at one extreme for “X” amount of miles. If your kit mentions this, please follow these instructions to allow the dampers to bed in and then you can set the damping to suit your purpose.

Achieving perfect damping

Correct coilover damping will control the rebound of the spring so that the car reacts to a bump with a single movement of its weight up and down and then settles back to its normal position this is a basic guide on setting this up.

Firstly you need to drive the car to establish a baseline and I recommend doing this with the dampers set at fully soft.

This should slightly underdamp the spring and you will find that when you go over a bump the car will compress and rebound then you will feel a slight wave motion as the spring lifts and lowers a few times.

In this diagram, the car's damper should compress on the bump up to number 2 but we are looking specifically at how the car behaves at numbers 3 and 4.
The damper will be rebounding back out at 3 and should be back at normal level driving by 4. You will find the car does a single bob at the front as it comes off the bump.

However, if the front bounces a few times after 4 the damping is too soft and not controlling the spring so raising the coilover damping a few clicks should help control this.

Go too hard on the coilover damping though and it will mean that the car doesn’t compress when you hit a bump and instead the tyre will deflect. This means that on the rebound side at 3 and 4 the damper will not rebound back out so the tyres will become unweighted reducing grip, giving quite a harsh ride and adding stress through the sidewall of the tyre.

There is also an amount of personal preference in this and the car's geometry, tyre pressure and even tyre brand can also affect how the car reacts to bumps.