About to order new dampers need advice
Discussion
Hi,
I am upgrading the dampers on my westfield and have spoken to aurok who qouted approx £1400 for one way adjustable Ohlins manufactured specifically for my car. However when i have been researching i have found for the same price i can get two way nitrons. My question is which would be better or more specificaly which would you go for?
Thanks in advance
Regards
Ross
I am upgrading the dampers on my westfield and have spoken to aurok who qouted approx £1400 for one way adjustable Ohlins manufactured specifically for my car. However when i have been researching i have found for the same price i can get two way nitrons. My question is which would be better or more specificaly which would you go for?
Thanks in advance
Regards
Ross
This one could be a can of worms... some people have very strong views/loyalty towards a particular damper manufacturer. 
You don't tell us what spec your car is or what you use it for, but in reality both Nitron and Ohlins are very good dampers. Personally, I'd go for the Nitrons, but unless (a) you know what you're doing with set-up; (b) you're a good enough driver for it to make a difference and ; (c) you're using the car for something where the last 1/10th of a second on lap time actually matters, 2-way adjustable dampers are slight overkill and can just give you a wider range of settings to f
k up the car's handling with.
That's probably a slightly pessimistic view, though, so if you feel the need for 2-way adjustables, by all means go for them; otherwise single-adjustable Nitrons would be cheaper and probably make you just as happy as single adjustable Ohlins...
You don't tell us what spec your car is or what you use it for, but in reality both Nitron and Ohlins are very good dampers. Personally, I'd go for the Nitrons, but unless (a) you know what you're doing with set-up; (b) you're a good enough driver for it to make a difference and ; (c) you're using the car for something where the last 1/10th of a second on lap time actually matters, 2-way adjustable dampers are slight overkill and can just give you a wider range of settings to f
k up the car's handling with.That's probably a slightly pessimistic view, though, so if you feel the need for 2-way adjustables, by all means go for them; otherwise single-adjustable Nitrons would be cheaper and probably make you just as happy as single adjustable Ohlins...
Thanks for the advice and opinions. The car will be used to race and do trackdays. Spec of the car is pretty high westfield seiw with approx 240 BHP xe engine 4 speed trans x sccr gearbox and a few other trick bits. I am also considering getting a datalogger to both improve myself and the car.
With regards to setup this will be done by professionals so should know what they are doing. As for the driver i would say that i am average. The last comment made Sam about chasing 1/10th of seconds in the series i want to go comparing lap times i am not to far away from that of the front runner in my class and he has another 60BHP than me. My thoughs though are to try and maximise the suspension rather than increase power as increasing power reduces the time between rebuilds and costs ££££!
Ross
With regards to setup this will be done by professionals so should know what they are doing. As for the driver i would say that i am average. The last comment made Sam about chasing 1/10th of seconds in the series i want to go comparing lap times i am not to far away from that of the front runner in my class and he has another 60BHP than me. My thoughs though are to try and maximise the suspension rather than increase power as increasing power reduces the time between rebuilds and costs ££££!
Ross
Ross,
Race use puts a different perspective on things.
No disrespect, as it obviously doesn't apply to you, but there seem to be a lot of guys on here who just do the occasional track day and appear to want to throw money at their cars for bragging rights more than anything else... which is fine as far as it goes (it's their money, after all!), but you do wonder WTF the point is for the sake of a few fractions of a second lap time on a non-competitive track day... the money would be much better invested in driver training in many cases!
If you're racing, clearly every 1/10th of a second does count, in which case I'd firmly go for the 2-way adjustable Nitrons in preference to single way adjustable Ohlins, particularly if you have access to the expertise to make the most of them... IMO, the extra 'depth' of adjustability will outweigh any slight quality/consistency advantage that the Ohlins might have (and let's avoid the debate over how much of the extra cost of the Ohlins is just down brand name! )
Race use puts a different perspective on things.
No disrespect, as it obviously doesn't apply to you, but there seem to be a lot of guys on here who just do the occasional track day and appear to want to throw money at their cars for bragging rights more than anything else... which is fine as far as it goes (it's their money, after all!), but you do wonder WTF the point is for the sake of a few fractions of a second lap time on a non-competitive track day... the money would be much better invested in driver training in many cases!
If you're racing, clearly every 1/10th of a second does count, in which case I'd firmly go for the 2-way adjustable Nitrons in preference to single way adjustable Ohlins, particularly if you have access to the expertise to make the most of them... IMO, the extra 'depth' of adjustability will outweigh any slight quality/consistency advantage that the Ohlins might have (and let's avoid the debate over how much of the extra cost of the Ohlins is just down brand name!
)Edited by Sam_68 on Sunday 7th September 20:54
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