I think anytime you have a spring and shock combination not valved/designed for one another you will experience premature wear. That said, its not as though these springs are going to blow out the factory shocks in a hurry.

One thing to consider will be the rear tire wear associated with lowering the car (even with just springs) and being unable to correct the rear camber back to spec. Seems like the $600 adjustable dog bone kits are worthwhile to get the camber back in spec and avoid chewing up $1k+ of rear tires every 5k miles or less.

 

Are you running 18s or 19s?

What dog bones would you recommend?

 

That's indeed what I was referring to. Typically the shock will work with a small range of spring rates, maybe the Porsche ones are good enough for the lowering springs, not sure?

When I bought my GTI a couple of years ago, the PO had Koni FSD shocks (meant for stock ride height) on the car with Eibach lowering springs. The car would bounce on dips; definitely not right. I swapped the shocks out with Bilstein sports and it handles great now.

 

19's in the summer, 18's in the winter.

My only problem is i'm going through the rear tires way too quickly....need to invest in the dogbones.

 

Guys, it's not the camber that is killing your tires unless you are much over -2.0 camber. What is killing your tires is too much toe. Having adjustable toe arms is the key, not really the dogbones. If you are cording the inside 1" or so of your tire than it's a toe issue. Too much camber will generally wear the tire more gradually across the whole tread. Set up your alignment with minimal toe, around 0.8mm per side and you'll be set.

 

I have H&R on my 996 with all factory ecentrics and tires are wearing fine after 6k miles. This is negative 2 camber and .03 and .04 toe. This was best tech could get with factory ecentrics.

 

I really hadn't thought about Toe being an issue moreso than camber. Everyone seems to recommend replacing the dogbones to alleviate tire wear issues, but not the toe-kit.

Anyone know if its worthwhile to replace the front components as well as the rears?

 

i have the adjustable toe links installed, and they did the trick. I have -1.9 camber, and almost 0(what the tech recommended) toe on the rear, and my tires wear evenly.

 

Yea I was given a very conservative alignment so I dont' think I have to worry much about excess wear

 

Every car will be a bit different but generally once you lower past a certain amount your toe eccentric will not be able to compensate and you will have too much toe. With too much toe, with each revolution of the tire you are scrubbing it sideways to an extent. I run -2.1 in the rear with 1.5mm total toe (this is less than factory spec) and have no wear issues. I have Porsche Motorsport adjustable toe arms which allow me to bypass the factory eccentric adjustment. I had adjustable dog bones on the car but got rid of them and put the factory dog bones back on. The Aurora heim joints kept wearing out on the adjustables and were a bit noisy. The factory pieces work just fine unless you really want a super benign alignment or want to go super low in the rear. My rear height is at 133mm using the Porsche measuring points or 25.75" measured to the fender. In the front I'm at 25.125" (112mm) with -2.2 camber and 1.0mm total toe. This is all on JRZ coils.. I track my car frequently and I corded all 4 tires at the same time with my alignment. Hope that helps...

 

Thanks for the info!

I'm not going to be going for tire-tucking stance, but am trying to get a feel for how low I can go without a need for aftermarket arms, etc.

Is GT2 ride height still high enough to allow for the factory eccentrics to accommodate a proper mild alignment? I will be DDing my car and want to extend tire life as far as possible.

Thanks!

 

nice suttle drop

 

Pic#4 looks sexy, the drop does make a difference.

 

I had H&R springs on my 996 C4 with stock shocks and everybody said the car would handle terribly if I didn't do the shocks too, but the car actually handled great. The only issue I ran into was bottoming out the shocks because the valving wasn't stiff enough.

It seems that on the Turbo the shocks similarly work very well with lowering springs, significantly better than on a regular 996, but the fact is they'll definitely wear out faster being an inch lower on their range versus what they're designed for.

I've still yet to hear anyone report issues with the stock shocks and lowering springs on a Turbo, but one issue is most people with Turbos go to coilovers instead of just doing springs or springs and shocks. On the NA 996 models a lot more people do the spring and shock route instead of coilovers since it's not a car bought by as many serious modders.

I'd love to see any info about shock failures on Turbos with just a spring change. I'm also curious whether people experience any bottoming issues with just springs.

I've considered going the spring/Bilstein shock route myself instead of coilovers just to save some money short-term and see how it changes the car versus stock, and then going with coilovers further down the road. I like to experiment with different mods, especially ones I can't get really solid info on.

 

no issues here... they look equally good on the OEM wheels as well! regarding tire wear for street duty i've just been running hankook ventus evo's and put over 5k on them and the rears don't show any signs of going kaput or anywhere near it. yea they aren't as sticky as the high priced stuff but for 90% of my street driving around here I can't notice a difference in performance and they wear awesome.