phillipj

I second the springs versus coilovers for an everyday driver. Mine is very liveable on city streets. Plus it handles great on the twisties..

A few of my friends have coilovers. They work amazing on Angeles Crest.. Like a slot car.. But pretty miserable in the city..Guess it just depends on how you use your car..

MishaDesigns

nice subtle difference but should be a monster on the track!

TT Gasman

I run the GT3 LCA and adj rear toe bars, allows virtually any alignment. This works great with the factory springs and dampers, even better with a set of lowering springs if you can take the scraping. It's very, very hard to beat the factory.

speed21

^ Agree this set up works....have basically the same on my own. Also agree those Bilsteins have a terrible track record for reliability. I've read of so many disasters and unhappy customers now yeeeks!......so glad i haven't got them any where near my car.

Agree with Matthew they arent' for street because they ride like crap but in so far as being suitable for every track or backroad i simply can't agree on that at all. In those environments when you are punting a car fast the suspension needs to have the right amount of give in it to soak up the bumps and undulations in the road without bouncing the car off line. That can really slow you down. This is where a properly set up stock suspension will outperform that awfully unresolved overly taught/rigid set up all day every day. As i said earlier, i'm sure there would have to be better coilover options out there than the Bilstein offering.....well one can only hope...

I feel for LewisB because the poor guy has gone out with expectations and found he is left wondering what on earth has he done with his beloved ride. If i was him i'd just bite the bullet now and rip em out rather than persevering torturing himself trying to tolerate the misgivings of that system. We all make mistakes....

GMP - Matthew

All I can say is that the car above sees the track all the time and it runs great for a convertible and I sell quite a few sets of these kits to customers around the world that are tracking their car or taking the car on some twisty back roads and the car handles great. Granted most of these back roads are pretty smooth very similar to the track and on these roads your not pushing it nearly as hard as you would be on the track. I have driven both spring set ups and coilover sets ups on the track in this exact car the coilovers out perform them all day with the same modifications.

GMP - Matthew

You are right though if you live in the city or areas where there are terrible roads you be driving a 911 period let alone one with PSS10's on it. This is just not the car for you. If you live in the city and want a sports car or live where there are not so good roads, and you want to own and drive a 911, buy a trailer and take it to the track or buy a sports car with a softer suspension like an S5 or R8. The 911 has in my opinion a too stiff of a suspension from the factory to be an everyday driver unless all your roads are smooth as glass.

aa909

this is always an interesting topic. you can read 10 threads on this and get ten opinions. There is a thread on 6speed that swears by the PSS10s and folks also claim that lowering springs will wear out and damage the stock shocks. hard to know what to believe

in any case after researching this topic for 2 months and riding in a few modified cars I ended up ordering the GMG WC lowering springs.

speed21

Not sure if i would agree with you there Matt. That's the beauty of a 911 vs most of the sports cars that are available today......it's a car that can be used as a daily drive and Porsche went to a lot of effort to make it that way. It's the kind of car you can drive on crappy city streets or take it out to rough backroads and drive the pants out of it all day long and not get out of it feeling like you've just been put through the wringer. It's only when you stick in an unresolved AM suspension system such as this Bilstein coliover set up into a Porsche that the car then becomes virtually unusable and intolerable.

As you know, Porsche does make track biased cars such as the GT3 and RS versions etc and those cars are extremely well resolved for the track and, also to the extent they can be driven with minimal pain on conventional roads. The bottom line is that this BS system is BS and most find that out sooner or later. Look, if it makes you feel any better I do feel sorry for you and other vendors having to sell this unresolved crap to customers only then to have to put up with the inevitable complaints that follow. I mean you guys are entitled to make a living without copping grief along the way. It's just a shame that some of these manufacturers can't put sufficient R and D in so the stuff actually delivers to customer expectations, and in line with all the marketing hype that gets spruiked along the way for the purpose of getting punters to part with their hard earned. That's where the problem starts for you guys. Too much BS only to then find the product was BS. If only there was less time spent on BS marketing and more time spent on properly developing the product for the actual car so it would deliver properly then everyone would be laughing. Not the case unfortunately..

speed21

Yep know the thread and i laugh everytime i read it. He is seemingly out on his own pushing hard for the product.....probably based on the $ he's unloaded which can be the case in many instances, but his main problem is there are simply far too many that have had their fingers burned. Myself included. So he's left having to prop up and make excuses why things went so wrong for all the complainants. An exercise in futility.... Lol Let's just all hope he never wises up and removes the rubbish because then you really won't be able to shut him up....and I mean that in the nicest possible way as Can is a great guy at heart.

Frankly the GMG would be my pick all day every day over coil overs particularly if ride height was a key feature of the purchase. These lowering coils sound like they have been developed by a Porsche specialist who has really put the time in on these 997tt cars to get it as right as can be....although that said i'm sure there is a compromise somewhere.

TT Surgeon

Paul is 100% right.
I've been driving 911s in nyc for 10 yrs, it ain't the car. These AM billsteins are junk, I wish I never heard of them, I had both setups on my first 997tt, the gmg was far superior. In fact champion motorsports tested billsteins back to back vs HR lowering springs, guess which was significantly better on the track...springs. The guy on 6spd has never been to the track in his life, take his track experience with a huge grain of salt.
The best setup is gt3 LCAs, adj toe links, adj sways +- springs depending on your hood. Too bad porsche never made a x73 variant for the 997tt, that would be my choice!

speed21

Seems you and I are on the same page with this Chris

Like yourself I too have had my backside in a range of Porsches over the past 18 years and I have to say the worst mistake I have ever made was to have allowed myself to become drawn into the BS hype over those BS Bilstiens. There is basically nothing wrong with any Porsche. The biggest problem is always with the driver (skills) and, when half baked unresolved junk like these BS coilovers is spruiked as a some kind of golden panacea folks get sucked in, and that's when the problems really start.

And, totally agree certain golden talk from armchair experts should be taken with a VERY big grain of salt.....make that the size of Uluru (in Aus).....a very big grain indeed.

I also note specialised Porsche racing outfits such as TPC racing as well as Techart have both had to do extensive modifications of their own to these BS PSS10 shocks in the valving and spring combinations to get them to work satisfactorily on the car. This product is seemingly being marketed and sold by vendors as being a bolt on improvement over the stock handling of the car (straight out of the box) and that couldn't be further from the truth (as found from my own regrettable experience).

And to hear vendors spruik there is little difference to the ride characteristics over the stock set up is just total utter misleading nonsense.

Edit. Btw Chris I read that review a while back now but can't find the link to put it up for the members. It was a very telling and comprehensive report. If you have it that'd be great for those members sitting on the fence.

Anyway, IIRC essentially the review confirmed the 997tt.1 with the H and R coilovers performed better everywhere over the Bilstein coilovers and was therefore far more reassuring to punt hard vs the overly nervous and fidgety Bilsteins which left the driver in a stressed out lather. IIRC the final upshot was the H and R springs worked harmoniously with the chassis producing better times whilst providing a comfortable ride. Not so for the more expensive BS coilovers.

TT Surgeon

I initially had gmg springs on my car, got sucked in by the hype, did the bs thing. Seemed ok, did a road trip to barber in Alabama, s trip i did twice w the gmgs, worst driving experience of my life, took them off a week later.
Plus they sucked on the track vs the gmgs that farnbacherloles had set up for me.
It's not the popular answer but Paul is correct in his eval of bilsteins. Sorry Matt, calls em like I sees em.

speed21

^ I got to hand it to you, you're smart booting em off after just a week. Fool me stuck it out and wound up pre trading the car after a year. Didn't matter as at that stage i was hardly driving it so I figured it was easier and cheaper to just pull the ripcord. After driving it my dealer looked at me, shook his head and pulled em off as part of the deal. Even he recognised they'd have a heck of a job selling the car with em on. Pure punishment. Oh well. We live and learn.... i just wrote it off as as one of life's mistakes. Funny really. Especially when you read some of the hype inc that ongoing rave on 6.

LewisB

I wanted the set up mostly for spirited coastal drives and also for the Sierra Nevada roads.......they definitely work for those arenas where I put the most miles on my car. Too bad I have to drive thru SF to get out of the city! We need to divert funds to repair the roadways. Instead, we pay for uninsured to have free transgender operations. Sigh.

dawich

Love it. A lot.