^^^Thanks for the kind words!

BTW, does anyone know of a good Porsche shop in Pittsburgh area? Someone is PM'ing me with some suspension related issue.

 

This is an informative and fun -- and very lonnnnng -- thread! I too live in the Santa Monica mountains and commute through the canyons. Although not really a daily-driver I've been driving my Turbo to work 2-3 days a week, plus of course weekend fun stuff. I have a heavily-modified and lightened 914-6 racecar which is certainly not a direct comparison but one of the benchmarks I can compare/contrast in addition to the before/after 997.1 setup.

So I am pretty much sold on the PSS10 setup now and will be sure to share my thoughts once the car is done (may not be till June though.) I am concerned about maintaining reasonable ride quality and height -- the car already scrapes at home, office and gas station -- but it sounds like those goals can be achieved with minimal compromise.

Thanks Can and others for the info here!

 

^^^^Thanks for the nice comment. Ahh... you commute through canyon roads and own a highly modded race car, so I am preaching to the choir, but yes, stiffening the suspension is an absolute must for our Turbo on mountain roads. I guarantee you will love it :-). You simply cannot go fast in our stock Turbo in tight turning radius as the body rolls too much. It takes ALL the fun out of driving. I learned this hard lesson chasing a GT3 on Muholland with a professional driver - we switched cars back and forth, I followed he led; my experience appeared in Car and Driver's lead article reviewing 2010 GT3.
A dealer I would recommend is AWE Tuning - authorized Bilstein dealer for the lifetime warranty and these people seemingly have inside connection with Bilstein and will go to bat for you if there is any problem. In Los Angeles, Tom of Lucent (cell # 310-733-7324) would be extremely highly recommended for Bilstein installation. Besides his considerable suspension tuning experience (he tunes Porsche/Ferrari/BMW for the track), Tom is cheap , a win win situation.

As you already know, the ride height of coilover is adjustable. With Bilstein, if you lower the minimum amount, 5 mm, the scrape would be minimum and very much doable for city driving; I've been driving this way in LA for 6 years. This adjustable height is one advantage of coilover as a majority of lowering springs on market lower the car a fixed 20-24 mm.
The ride compromise is minimum, yes stiffer but really is not bad at all on LA road. In comparison, a Bilstein Turbo feels similar to my BMW M3 on its stiff suspension setting; meaning, for sports drivers, it's a nothing. I rarely talk about it so as not to scare people off LOL, but actually in my car the springs have been changed to be even stiffer because like you, I live in a mountainous area of Los Angeles. There is a switchback right behind my house, no kidding.

Not for Chris, but I encourage anyone who is new to suspension, and to Porsche, to read the first page of this thread. It's information I gathered from knowledgeable people - guarantee :-) to be on the mark and no bs. Suspension tuning is always a trade-off of personal preferences, there is NO right or wrong, but know a world of extremely fun and sharp handling behavior is readily available if you so desire.

 

Not a Turbo...but I've had Bilstein Damptronics on my GTS for a little over a year now and really really like them.

 

Newer pictures - these taken with my Nikon gears: Nikon D80 shot in RAW, developed with Capture One. Lens was Nikon's superb and cheap 60mm f2.8 D prime.

 

Hi

I have a question that I hope to get answered.

Stock euro spec suspension.

My issue is breaking under cornering is not as stable as I want. The rear is unsettled and nervous.

What will help, I dont want to lower the car just yet. Just enable trailing the breaks cornering at speeds (over 60mph).

 

Usually those symptoms are a result of a weak LSD not locking under braking anymore, not enough toe in on the rear axle, and the soft stock bushings on the rear LCA and toe arms allowing the rear wheels to "spread" under hard braking and cornering thus resulting in a "nervous" rear end. A good fix is to install rear adjustable monoball toe arms and solid thrust arm bushings in the rear LCA. Both of these will help lock down your rear geometry under load and will make a huge difference without any undue noise or harshness. You will also want to tweak your sway bars a bit more towards understeer and that will allow you to trail brake more aggressively and deeper into the turn without your back end wanting to come around as much. You WILL have to rotate the car under braking by loading up the front tires and thus increasing grip but ultimately this will result is a faster set up.

 

Ok, thanks for the info!

Is there a good way of testing the lsd? I have the stock lsd, not the best afaik but I still have warranty so I could get it fixed for free.

 

Jack up one side of the car so one rear wheel is resting on the ground and one in the air. Place gearbox in neutral and see if you can easily rotate the wheel that's off the ground. If so, than your preload is all but gone. The factory LSDs are very weak to begin with.

 

Besides what pwdrhound mentioned (thanks), it is well known that the rear of our Turbo, even when brand new with working LSD, has a lot of unwanted vertical and lateral movements. Plain and simple, it has a softly tuned suspension. GMG Racing once had a video of the rear of our Turbo at speed and sadly you could see significant amount of movement of the rear.

Assuming all other components are working well, a basic principle of suspension tuning is this: any suspension is a system of links, with rubber/plastic washers etc. between the links that helpt to reduce NVH but hurt by increasing unwanted movement, if you replace any of these links with metallic counterparts (for example what pwdrhound mentioned with the LCA - monoball end & thrust arm bushing), the movement would decrease as they are all interconnected and all help to "brace" the movement.

So how do you know which link to "upgrade" to reduce this rear motion? With unlimited resources, one would get all different links and try them one by one http://www.tarett.com/items/996-997-...-arms/list.htm. With us being amateurs, the 2 starting point I could think of:
1. GMG sway bar with Tarrett drop links. I have direct experience with this: there is no question that this combination in my Bilstein car reduces the rear motion. In particular - the drop links, which are cheap and unlike any other link could be easily taken on and off to compare (I've done it several times and could confirm its effect with certainty.).
2. Rear Toe Control Arm: I don't have this but for whatever reason when I asked around, this is one of THE most recommended upgrades by tuners for reducing rear movement.

 

I've played around with this at length as everything on my car as been replaced with GT3 and/or Cup components. Eliminating toe change in the rear is most of your battle. The biggest bang for the buck to lock down the rear end and eliminate toe changes are solid LCA thrust arm bushings and adjustable toe arms. Don't bother changing out the upper dog bones, waste of time. You will realize a huge benefit by doing the thrust arm bushings and toe arms without any (or very very negligible) added NVH. The Tarett solid LCA thrust arm bushings are cheap at $200 for the pair and the Tarett toe arms are also reasonable at $450. Don't forget to add the dust boots. If money is no object, the 997Cup rear toe arms with the new pinch bolt are the way to go at the cost of around $800+ though. They are the best however. I would also add the Tarett monoballs to the rear LCA or just install the 997Cup LCA which already comes with monoballs and solid TA bushings. Here is a pic of the OEM rear LCA with the Tarett solid adjustable TA bushing and monoballs.

 

So it seems you both mentions the lower toe control arm, how much is it and what brand should I look at?

I am now thinking to do the toe control arm and the drop links if it isnt stupid money.

Still curious to testing the LSD though as well.

 

Thanks, I was actually wondering if there was oem parts for the job. Is gt3cup parts in general usable on a turbo?

 

Yes, they are.

 

Looked at sonnenporscheoemparts but cant find the gt3cup LCA, any idea where to find cup parts?

I probably will go with Tarret since money is an object (and my wife dont share my concern about cars behavior breaking&cornering at speed).

I will test the LSD today for preload, car is going to Porsche monday for a new set of front radiators, I will ask about the LSD.