REPORT: Suspension upgrades with Bilstein + GMG
Oct 1, 2008 | 07:40 PM
#45
Thread Starter
| Teamspeed Senior Member
Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 670
You know what, I think you are right!! I never noticed that before.
Looks like the left one points down and the right one points up!
I will see if I can get someone to fix that.
Thanks
Looks like the left one points down and the right one points up!
I will see if I can get someone to fix that.
Thanks
Oct 2, 2008 | 06:50 PM
#46
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| Teamspeed Senior Member
Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 670
Report to come tomorrow when I get time but I wanted to say a HUGE thankyou to Chris from Center Gravity for all his hard and most excellent work!!
...and boy does the Turbo look slick now it's lowered!
...and boy does the Turbo look slick now it's lowered!
Oct 3, 2008 | 05:48 AM
#49
Thread Starter
| Teamspeed Senior Member
Joined: Feb 2008
Posts: 670
OK so initial report. Please note that I need to do a lot more driving before I can give a more balanced perspective.
Bilstein's are the only aftermarket dampeners that I know which work with PASM (given the OEM ones are bottom of the range Bilstein anyway). That means the sport button still switches between soft and hard options.
If 0-10 is the range for a stock Turbo with normal mode being 0 and 10 being sport, then with the new Bilstein's normal is about 6 and sport is about 8 of 10. So normal is stiffer and sport is softer than stock - with the difference between the two much less apparent.
Now the big difference is how those bumps feel. So in normal mode you now feel more bumps in the road but instead of feeling all sharp and jagged (like stock Sport mode) the bumps now feel smoothed out. Chris likened this to stock feeling 'acidic' and the Damptronics feeling 'creamy'.
The whole car feels very much stiffer, flatter under acceleration (no squatting) and braking, and generally much more tight.
On the test drive me and Chris did, we couldn't invoke any over or under-steer going fast around (and around!) very small roundabouts. And on hard acceleration out of corners the car just grips into the tarmac and powers off!
Chris has done a great job with the geometry too, steering is very sharp and precise and as I mentioned the car just feels very balanced through corners now. We basically started of with GT3RS targets and then modified them slightly based on Chris' experience.
I will post later some pics of the alignment and corner balancing sheets Chris printed off for me.
That's all for now (as I have lots of work to get back to) but sufficed to say, I am extremely happy with my now near 'perfect Turbo'!
Bilstein's are the only aftermarket dampeners that I know which work with PASM (given the OEM ones are bottom of the range Bilstein anyway). That means the sport button still switches between soft and hard options.
If 0-10 is the range for a stock Turbo with normal mode being 0 and 10 being sport, then with the new Bilstein's normal is about 6 and sport is about 8 of 10. So normal is stiffer and sport is softer than stock - with the difference between the two much less apparent.
Now the big difference is how those bumps feel. So in normal mode you now feel more bumps in the road but instead of feeling all sharp and jagged (like stock Sport mode) the bumps now feel smoothed out. Chris likened this to stock feeling 'acidic' and the Damptronics feeling 'creamy'.
The whole car feels very much stiffer, flatter under acceleration (no squatting) and braking, and generally much more tight.
On the test drive me and Chris did, we couldn't invoke any over or under-steer going fast around (and around!) very small roundabouts. And on hard acceleration out of corners the car just grips into the tarmac and powers off!
Chris has done a great job with the geometry too, steering is very sharp and precise and as I mentioned the car just feels very balanced through corners now. We basically started of with GT3RS targets and then modified them slightly based on Chris' experience.
I will post later some pics of the alignment and corner balancing sheets Chris printed off for me.
That's all for now (as I have lots of work to get back to) but sufficed to say, I am extremely happy with my now near 'perfect Turbo'!
