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I’m at the same cross-road and am not sure of the right direction. The car will be used as primarily street w/ 2-3 weekends a year at the track in the instructor group. I’ve had Bilstein PSS9 on my 993 10+ years ago and Moton Club sports on the 964 which I sold a couple years ago. I thought both were good for what I needed at the time.
So, some have recommended going damptronic to keep PASM functionality and others have recommended the Ohlin R&T where I would lose PASM, but gain some tuning to get rid of the stock understeer. I haven’t been able to figure out the best answer for me, so am looking for additional dialog, recommendations, and experiences. Please keep it coming.
I have a 997.1 launch edition Carrera S and went from stock PASM with GMG springs and TPC box to the online road and track.. I have many monoball tarret and elephant racing suspension bits including GT3 control arms and monoball top mounts. The understeer with the same suspension settings is night and day with the Ohlins. The ohlins give the front end much more purchase and grip. Overall the car is significantly more planted on high and low speed turns as well as in fast transitions. As far as the ride quality, it is much more stiff as I went with the GT3 kit which is damped higher and has stiffer springs, but it should be similar to the standard Carrera kit as the dampening and valving is what makes them work so well. Dialed down to almost full soft, it is as stiff as it used to be with PASM on and aggressive TPC settings. I know mine isn't a good "stock to ohlins" comparison, but it does illustrate that even with a lot of suspension mods.... I wasn't able to effectively dial out the understeer and have a well balanced neutral car until I did the ohlins conversion. This is not to say that other coilovers would not have made an impact as well. I went with ohlins due to suspension shop recommendations and from all the positive reviews from the 911 community.
For true track enthusiasts with budget in mind, I can't imagine twice a year service cost associated with Ohlins. That is more then $4k between removal, service, alignments... I will stick with stock PASM or GT3 PASM with my DSC box. I have a great sway bars setup which gives me excellent neutral handling and I can dial in any extra oversteer if I need to. Driver's skills are the only limiting factor. Not trying to diminish the value of Ohlins but rather expressing my opinion from hard track user's stand pint.
ohlins are fantastic if the car has a passive non-electronic OEM suspension. but we have upgradable PASM suspensions. Going to a passive analog setup even ohlins from passive PASM is going backwards. Get DSC box and you now have active, electronic, adjustable suspension...it will smoke a passive setup as proven by TPC's race victories against passive setups using it.
Ohlins recommended service interval is 30,000 kms street or 20 hours track. These are recommended service intervals, based on usage you can increase it. Other coilovers also need service, it’s just the manufacturer do not openly mention it probably in fear of affecting their sales.
Took it to the track few days ago. Adjusted the ohlins to 8 clicks from full stiff and the car performed great. Brakes pedal seems to have gone soft and mushy after the trackday inspite of cool down laps at the track.
Purchased the below Upcoming mods. Will be installed in a week or two.
New steering rack, inner and outer tie rods
Spoon Rigid collars - not a very popular mod over here but the s2000 guys swear by it. For the price I figured id give it a shot and see what it does.. or does not do
Got a 991.2 steering wheel multifuction with PDK paddles to get rid of the terrible 997 steering with the pdk buttons. Had to get the new airbag as well for the wheel.
Motul RBF660 - to bleed the oem fluid out and replace
Heard a lot about the spoon rigid collar on the s2000 forums. As it was relatively inexpensive I thought I'd give it a try. Install was not too bad, you do need to lower the subframe using transmission jacks to fit these.
I did not notice any significant change in the car after they were installed. I do have coilovers and semi solid engine mounts so they might be masking any difference in ride or handling the rigid collar makes.
I could not find any instructions on how to install them specifically for the 997 before purchase and no vendor would send the instructions before purchase, so i have attached the instructions below in case anyone wants to see what they are getting into before purchase. 8 pieces in the front and 12 in the rear.
Yes the instructions come only in japanese!!! I used google image translate to help me.
Also added 10mm front and 8mm rear spacers from ecs tuning. I have the 8.5j 55 offset front and 11.5j 67 offset rear wheels on 305mm tires. Rears are flush, the fronts i could probably have gone 12-15mm with my current camber setup.
Alignment was also done and at my current ride height managed to get -1.43 front camber on stock arms and upper mount.
Will need to get adjustable lower control arms in the front to run more negative camber and at minimum a more adjustable rear toe arm in the future.
Heard a lot about the spoon rigid collar on the s2000 forums. As it was relatively inexpensive I thought I'd give it a try. Install was not too bad, you do need to lower the subframe using transmission jacks to fit these.
I did not notice any significant change in the car after they were installed. I do have coilovers and semi solid engine mounts so they might be masking any difference in ride or handling the rigid collar makes.
I could not find any instructions on how to install them specifically for the 997 before purchase and no vendor would send the instructions before purchase, so i have attached the instructions below in case anyone wants to see what they are getting into before purchase. 8 pieces in the front and 12 in the rear.
Yes the instructions come only in japanese!!! I used google image translate to help me.
Also added 10mm front and 8mm rear spacers from ecs tuning. I have the 8.5j 55 offset front and 11.5j 67 offset rear wheels on 305mm tires. Rears are flush, the fronts i could probably have gone 12-15mm with my current camber setup.
Alignment was also done and at my current ride height managed to get -1.43 front camber on stock arms and upper mount.
Will need to get adjustable lower control arms in the front to run more negative camber and at minimum a more adjustable rear toe arm in the future.
Everyone I've talked to about these including race shops and teams says they are snake oil. I'm conflicted because the general principle seems logical. The counter is that if you properly torque bolts in the first place, they wont move anyway. That doesn't solve for the centering of the bolt so I'm still conflicted.
Also, if they worked, why aren't racing teams using them?
Race teams have different approaches. Some use stainless steel brake lines while others use oem. Same with suspension, some go pasm delete with coilovers some use pasm with coilovers (tpc racing).
Anyway on street driving I did not notice any difference. Will see if it feels any different on track.
They subframe bolt definitely moves around a bit as I could see some marks on the subframe when I removed the bolts to install these rigid collars.
Maybe porsche has tighter clearances compared to a s2000? Just a thought
Race teams have different approaches. Some use stainless steel brake lines while others use oem. Same with suspension, some go pasm delete with coilovers some use pasm with coilovers (tpc racing).
Anyway on street driving I did not notice any difference. Will see if it feels any different on track.
They subframe bolt definitely moves around a bit as I could see some marks on the subframe when I removed the bolts to install these rigid collars.
Maybe porsche has tighter clearances compared to a s2000? Just a thought
I’ve been competitively racing an s2000 for several years, as well have worked with a coach/setup/data guy who I share with two other s2000 racers. We all have almost identical setups with custom valved penskes, monoballs throughout, no expenses spared...
I’ve literally never heard of anyone using these for what it’s worth.
Im glad to hear there’s been so many improts with the ohlins. I don’t have pasm, and looking forward to getting some oblins. I had them for a season on my s2000 before penskes, and you can really see their shortcomings there, but for a daily driver ocational DE car, I think they will be great. planning I’m running 18x9 and 18x11 wheels w re71’s, as with many others been doing the research of lca vs camber plates to make sure fitment isn’t an issue and get a bit more aggressive alignment.
Was due for a tire change and got the Michelin cup2 in 245/35 and 305/30 on my carrera sport wheels. Have only put a few miles but first impressions are they are light years better than the terrible Pirelli pzeros I had. Ride is a lot smoother and grips far better. I do feel like the feedback from the steering wheel could be better. It might be because the tire needs a few hundred miles to ‘break in’
2020 update
Got the car corner balanced + more aggressive alignment with slight toe out on the front.
Corner balancing has an immediate effect on the handling, car seems more planted and even the ride quality on the ohlins seem to have got slightly better.
Next up full respray color change from white to a new color. Then ppf front end, maybe change the seat upholstery a bit later on as well.
Will be upgrading to 350mm rotors and still looking for a used set of 6 piston calipers for the front from a 997.1 gt3 or any 997 turbo for a good price.
01-21-2018, 11:50 PM
