I was browsing through the Ariel Atom site earlier today 8well, looking at the local time, it was yesterday) and saw a 10-way adjustable shock upgrade. How the hell is this thing adjustable then? 10 notches on a setting or 10 settings??? I'm used to mountainbike suspension where an RC2 cartridge means rebound low and high speed compression setting (hence R and C2). Would this be a 3-way adjustable shock then? Or am i missing something?

As a guess I'd say it would be bump and rebound settings for slow speed, medium speed, middle speed, slightly faster speed and high speed (where the speed is the velocity of the piston movement, not vehicle speed ).

Yeah, i'm aware of the difference in low and high speed something (rebound/compression).

But still, 10-way?!?

EDIT: googling for 6-way adjustable shock gave me a result of a drifter selling a coilover kit where the 6-way stood for 6 stiffness settings (???), since he said he used it in the '1' setting for daily driving since that was the softest. This is totaly weird since the damper has no effect on stiffness (appart from making the (high speed) compression soooo slow that running over a hole gives you no movement at all, that would be incredibly stiff).

http://www.modernperformance.c ... _359&products_id=1552

There is a coilover that has 32 settings, though still singly adjustable, IE bound and rebound cannot be adjusted separately.

I thought a slow compression/rebound setting meant that the shock would not take as much energy from the spring as fast as a 'faster' setting?

30-40 adjustment levels is pretty typical of none task specific cheap after market performance dampers. Better quality dampers tailored to track work will offer more variables but less levels of adjustability, it is far more useful to have to deal with 8 settings rather than 32 when changing dampers in a pit stop for example.

Damper settings can have a large effect on car handling, unlike in LFS changing spring stiffness isn't practical at a circuit and normally competition cars will run with a set of springs everywhere. Adjustment is instead achieved through changing the dampers and obviously for road use hard damping is undesirable on rough roads.

Quote from Christopher Raemisch :

http://www.modernperformance.c ... _359&products_id=1552

There is a coilover that has 32 settings, though still singly adjustable, IE bound and rebound cannot be adjusted separately.

I thought a slow compression/rebound setting meant that the shock would not take as much energy from the spring as fast as a 'faster' setting?

32 setting meaning it has 32 notches? I don't see that as a 32-way adjustable shock, correct me if i'm wrong though. If i am, i have an infinetly adjustable fork on my bike since the rebound knob doesn't have notches, it just turns a few circles and that's it (if i remember correctly, normally there are clicks on these settings just so they don't move on their own).

And the reason to have high and low speed compression and rebound is to tune suspension behaviour separately for braking and track settings - low speed is in affect when braking (normally, setting it to harder will mean less squat on the front) and high speed when going over bumps (setting it on harder is usefull on smoother tracks but will make the car jupy on bumbier tracks).

Quote from Primoz :

32 setting meaning it has 32 notches? I don't see that as a 32-way adjustable shock, correct me if i'm wrong though. If i am, i have an infinetly adjustable fork on my bike since the rebound knob doesn't have notches, it just turns a few circles and that's it (if i remember correctly, normally there are clicks on these settings just so they don't move on their own).

It is a basic single way shock, the adjustment will effect all bump and rebound. More advanced shocks allow bump and rebound to be adjusted independently for different kinds of motion. Cheap adjustable dampers typically do not have notches, there's nothing wrong in this they should not move but setting the car up consistently is impossible without testing the dampers, which is obviously never going to be done by somebody who can't afford dampers with notches or during an event.

I understand dampers for the most part. I was only trying to to explain that the shock/coilover market explain each setting as an 'adjustment' and the C/O's I showed you were '32 way adjustable.

You are right, it has 32 settings and it's singly adjustable, like ajp mentioned.


I don't think they should call each setting a 'way'. When I first looked at shocks it made me confused too. I thought a way would be like adjusting the rebound separate from the bound and have slow/fast adjusters too.

I understand shocks and how they are used for the most part in setup. Just showing you that more than likely that the 8-way shock for the atom is probably a shock that has 8 different settings and not 8 different parameters that can be changed.

Given that high quality 4 way shocks are well into 4 figures per corner I doubt that they would be spending in excess of £5000 on shocks for what is essentially a fairly cheap road/track day car.

So, in the end, that probably is only a shock with 10 notches?

And i am aware of the differences in high and low speed settings. Not much from cars since i haven't actually tinkered with them but you can draw a lot of paralels from the mountainbiking world (i suspect).