Suspension Tuning Guide - Tweaking And Tuning For Twisties

We initially put Greg Lovell from Anti Venom behind the wheel to get his opinion on the car. With his extensive background in Corvettes and heavily-modified cars, we were pleased to hear him say, "Man that was fun! I can't believe how good this GTO feels. The brakes feel great, it was stable as hell in the corners-it just needed more grip." This thing is the real deal.

To achieve more grip, Nitto NT01 R-compound tires were bolted on. From there, we added more rebound by zeroing out the shocks and adding a single click at a time until the car started experiencing some high-speed bouncing, meaning there was too much rebound. We returned the shocks to full hard to close the check valve, and softened the rebound by one click from the previous setting. This cleaned up the car and reduced its tendency to hop. Our final settings were 8 in front and 12 in the rear.

With these settings made, we wanted to increase steering feel and response by adding compression. We didn't notice any improvement when clicks were added to the rear, but the front benefited from the increased compression by giving the front-end more positive steering. When it was pushed too far, the suspension forced the car into understeer; we backed it off. Our final settings were 4 in the front and 4 in the rear.

Our KW V3s came with 550-lb/in springs up front and a proprietary progressive spring rate in the rear. These rates were calculated specifically for the GTO on KW's chassis dyno system, which tests chassis and suspension characteristics. KW claims these rates provide the best compromise between street use and racing for the V3.

The main force you'll notice impacting ride quality is rebound. This is the force that makes itself evident on brick roads and the like. To best tune for this, we again zeroed the shock and returned to the settings suggested by Jay Chen. From there, we were able to determine what was needed to increase on-road comfort. Whenever a raised manhole or pothole was encountered, the KW V3s dealt with them rather nicely. But, with all of the tunability built into these shocks, we wanted to see if we could make the car feel better.

By reducing rebound even further, we found the GTO would ride smoother on the highways, yet we didn't experience the "float" that KW was referring to. The compression settings were left the same because it didn't noticeably compromise the comfort on the street, but when it was reduced, the car felt a little softer in turns. This could be considered "comfortable" to some drivers, but I preferred the dialed-in feeling of the increased compression-with it the car felt planted on on-ramps and lane changes.