As a follow-up to my previous thread. It seems that you guys opinion is the KW are a little better, so I will be getting some soon.
My question is what setting do I start at?
In the summer when I race I can stiffen them up and lower the TT. How easy is it to do so? (ride adjust and height adjust)

I use my TT as a daily driver and do have a few rough roads to cross. I also have some high speed benders to have fun with on my way to work !
So do I start soft in the front and just a little stiffer in the rear, or is the softest setting going to lean too much to have fun?

 

I can't speak for the bilstein, however I did put on the KW Variant 3 on my 2003 TT late last year, just in time for a DE at Mid Ohio. WOW. What a difference these coil overs make on the car. I would highly recommend them. You will want a reputatable shop to corner balance & do the set up on the car.

 

KW provides a recommended set up for our cars. I went with that and it has been fine on both the road and the track.

 

The KW V3 are a good choice.

For those rough roads use pretty soft compression setting to begin, say 3 clicks from full soft depending on your tire, but you can at the same time keep the rebound around medium or mid+1 towards hard for good body control and to avoid the nose bumping up and down, floating around etc on freeway etc. This gives a measure of compliance and at the same time should feel really predicable yet fun in the curvy roads.

Use similar settings front and rear to begin, maybe slightly harder rebound front than rear since it's good in these cars to let the rear move a bit (more predictable and better traction). The KW baseline is very good.

So front:
Rebound 7-9 from full soft, depends on how bouncy your tires are (the bouncier the nose is the firmer you tighten rebound - it keeps the nose in check)
Compression 3-4 from full soft, test it out what gives enough compliance on the rough roads but yet doesn't make your steering feel vague.

Rear end when driven up to 90% is pretty in-sensitive and no probs to let it float around a little, usually adds a lot of body comfort with a bit soft rear and it doesn't hurt spritited driving. Only at 90% and up, racedrive style it will really matter.
Rebound 6-8 (of 14) from full soft. The less you do the more the rear will allow harder trailbraking action - until a point where the rear end just feels totally like swaying aorund.
Rear compression I'd start at 5 from full soft.

This should give pretty good comformt, yet spirited feel. On my car which had KW V3, I used those as baseline for street setting and it worked great. This car was lightened a bit so if you are at stock weight you have a little more mass and may have to add 1 click at each corner. But hopefully gives you an idea how to get a nice ride.

Then for track, general rule of thumb is pretty much:
Cold, green track, low grip tires = soft compression.
Clean track, good grip, sticky tires = stiffen compression.

Don't mess to much with compression if you are unsure about what to do. Think of it as a "comfort tool" when street driving, set it where car swallows bumps well and leave it alone.

For handling (like over/understeer) instead fine tune rebound to make the car handle the way you want into and out of turns. A couple clicks here or there make big difference on traction, push, corner entry. Post up feedback and ppl in this forum incl myself will be happy to help what next clicks to make. In a couple of weeks you should have a good idea how small changes affect the car.

The separate adjustability between compression and rebound sets these shocks miles apart from other alternatives that uses combined - both for track and street.