This evening I took the dampers back off the car to set them up properly now that someone on the Fiat Forum has kindly pointed me in the direction of some more helpful instructions. They are set by compressing them completely until they engage an adjustment cam inside the bottom of the unit. The manual states that there are ‘approximately 2.5 turns’. These units have 2.25 turns. I found that the one on the driver’s side had half a turn from zero and the passenger side was on zero. Turned fully counter-clockwise the rebound is softest, turned fully clockwise it is at its hardest.
The PDF describing the settings is available here:
Given that there is not much to go on to determine what setting to use, I decided to time how long the damper took to return from fully compressed to fully extended under gravity for every 0.25 turns from zero to 2.25. The chart below shows the results.
Although not the most scientific experiment ever conducted, I was interested to note that the result is not linear, and the time to rebound became longer at a faster rate the further clockwise I turned.
I timed the standard damper at 25 seconds to de-compress, but I’m not sure if that is a valid comparison as it is much ligher than the Koni unit so I would expect it to be slower like for like. In the end I settled for 1.875 turns (really!) which took 45 seconds to de-compress, so I am assuming will provide a fair bit more rebound damping than the zero to half-turn that I had initially.
Test drive to follow…
Panda 100HP 