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Interesting, yeah I'll have to keep experimenting! I'm not sure how much difference one or two clicks really makes. In other words 5/6 may not be that much different than 5/5.
I find the suspension at 4/6 or 5/6 to be more comfortable than the M030+B6 setup I had before. Could be the added stiffness of the M030 springs or maybe my shocks were getting a little tired. Overall the car is supple and smooth over bumps that it would crash a bit over before. On larger dips its just better damped and more controlled. A nice improvement for sure.
I did some experimentation with various settings while driving the same section of road back to back with speeds varying from 25mph hard corners to 80mph straights. Figured I'd share my experience for those who read this thread and are subsequently setting up their PSS10s.
All tests were done with tire pressures set at my preferred 33/35.
Shock pressures front/rear:
- 4/6: Front felt soft and comfortable, but more steering 'action' in a straight line. Not sure if its bump steer or tramlining but the wheel was moving around a lot and the rear felt too active and fidgety.
- 4/5: Car felt more balanced and more comfortable but through the corners there was noticeably more lean as well as squat and dive.
- 5/6: Car felt very balanced with a slight tendency toward oversteer, steering was extremely precise, almost nervous and darty at high speeds. Extremely planted through the corners. Even with the rear end sliding a bit at corner exit the car was 100% controllable. Slight reduction in comfort over the sharper, smaller bumps but more comfortable over large dips as there was less body motion.
For my roads and my driving, 5/6 feels great.
I only played with variations of settings from 4 through 6 since after trying 5/6 I felt that anything more than 6 would feel too stiff for my lumpy roads and 4/5 was already feeling too soft with too much body roll. I was surprised at how different the car felt within this small range. I should try 1/1 and 10/10 at some point just to experience it but I expect the lower setting would feel far too soft and floaty for me and the stiffer setting is probably only livable on very smooth roads or tracks.
I just got off the phone with SteveW and he recommends starting with 4/6 on a street driven car. Up a click for an area with smooth roads (5/7) and down a click for rougher roads (3/5).
He feels that will give you nice handling and the car will rotate nicely. If you want more understeer and a little bit safer feel then moving to 5/6 or 5/5 is the right thing to do. For me personally, with RS alignment, I felt 4/6 was too much, the car felt too eager to rotate. So I think keeping it to 5/6 or 5/5 is where I'm headed.
Unfortunately, the project will be on hold for a little bit. Bilstein forgot to include a part in the kit and will need to ship me another one of the rubber rings circled below.
Hi Mike,
Do you have the part number of the missing rubber rings?
It's official - Bilstein's customer service is not designed to handle this kind of situation. It sucks, bad.
As an end customer, one cannot simply order a replacement part from the kit from Bilstein. Instead, one must swim unnaturally upstream through their complex retail and distribution channel. Even with the help of an excellent, persistent, and well connected retailer, it appears we're stuck in limbo, powerless to resolve this issue.
I could get a repair done on my cable service in the amount of time I've been waiting for this simple part. If someone at Bilstein reads this - when a customer compares your customer service to that of the American cable industry, you have a BIG problem that needs immediate action.
Since I may be waiting for a long time with an immovable car, I went ahead and ordered, had delivered, and installed new brake rotors! Man, they make my calipers look very old.
This is a fact as I'm going through the same ordeal. I can't even get Bilstein to provide the part numbers to google.
The Hat this fits into is a bit different - its designed for one that I made years ago.
Cheers,
Mike
Thanks Mike for this picture. I'm attempting to make these myself using the following part from Amazon. I'm adding to this post for future reference to others.
I would source some multi-ply, commercial grade rubber. Neoprene will never hold up in this application. Look at the material in Mikes pics! You can see the rubber has material in it.
Thanks for all the info. Just done this job. FYI I was aiming for ROW Sport Heights of 144mm front and 127mm rear Using your results I adjusted the front Bilsteins to the highest on the installation range (140mm) which resulted in 138mm ride height front and left. The rear I set to the middle of the range (around 203mm) and got 124mm right and 125mm left. Which is close enough to send to the shop for the geometry check. Thanks for the installation guide.
I’m working myself up to possibly doing this install myself. One of the biggest obstacles is popping off the top nuts. I’ve done the Coilovers installs on a couple of Japanese cars and each time I did that part, I used my impact gun and it popped right off. Is it not recommended to use an impact gun to take off and put back on the top nut on the 993?
One important remark regarding rear hight...
if you install PSS10 with rear camber plates (monoballs) you won't be able to set higher then RS hight because the rear PSS10 strut thread is limited.
Any experience with this issue, please?
If I knew that I would consider installing the original top mounts
03-01-2017, 11:01 AM
