supertanch
Ready to race!
- Location
- Fremont, CA
Just a brief review of my impression about bilstein clubsports coilovers.
I've had Bilstein pss10s for over 2 years and have been to 16 track days with them. They provide a great balance between road and track, rides firm but not too harsh, on track they give consistent performance that you would expect from the spring rates supplies from them. Rebound adjustment is also very easy, both front/rear does not require one to take off the wheels.
It has came to a point where I started to feel the limit of the pss10, I wish they could have supplied with much higher sprint rates. But simply swap out the spring will upset the shock's damping and I'll need to revalve the shocks, which adds another additional cost. Also the lack of a camber plate really limited my front camber settings.
Recently bilstein has introduced their new clubsports coilovers, after a long debating between bilstein clubsports vs KW clubsports, I decided to choose Bilstein given the easier adjustment for the rear shocks and my good experience with their product.
I ordered them from AWE Tuning, this is the box they came front, I'm actually gonna save the box this time because it has a signature of Walter Rohrl :thumbsup:
The supplied front spring rates are 571,
The rear springs are progressive with a secondary rate of 428,
Front almost doubles the rate of pss10 where the rear is about 100lb/in higher.
The front shocks are inverted so the rebound/compression adjustments are at the bottom of the shocks. The rebound adjustments are done by turning the red nob, where the compression adjustment requires to use a special key supplied which turns the black ring above the red nob. There's a red dot at the bottom of the shock to indicate which settings you are on. Both rebound/compression provides 10 different settings with 10 being the hardest.
Unlike the pss10s, the rear shocks adjustments are at the top of the shock. This will normally require you to take off the rear shock for any adjustment. However bilstein supplies a new set of rear mounts which are much smaller and provides enough room for adjustment with just rear wheels taking off.
I had the initial settings set at front 3/3 and rear 5/5.
Road review:
The moment I drove the car out of the parking lot of 034 motorsports, I was shocked at how the car feels:
My god it rides sooooo smooth! I usually had my old pss10 set at 3 front and 5 rear for road driving, but there's no where they rides as good as the clubsports kit.
I've had the preparation for hard ride due to the much higher spring, but I had no idea they would actually ride much much better. Going over the dips on bridge connector at high speed, the car does not upset nor bouncy, it's just smooth. And the camber plate does not add any additional noise. When driving on bad local roads at low speed, the car does not bouncy around, instead, the shock absorb the road imperfection very well. It was such a surprise to me.
I had the car aligned and corner balanced with the following settings:
Unfortunately, the front camber plate does not provide enough adjustment, they have a very little range.
Camber: Front -2.0, -2.1
Rear: -2.5, -2.4
Toe: Front 0.03, 0.04
Rear: -0.04,-0.04
The alignment tech said if I wanted to gain more camber I would need to have lower the car more, I had the front measured at 25.8" fender to ground and rear at 25.3"
Track review:
I dont have any performance review on road since I dont really drive the car hard on public roads, so here comes the review on track :wink:
Took it to Laguna Seca yesterday with a set of RS-3 (6th track days on them).
Had front set at 5/5 and rear at 7/7.
After the warm up lap, I started to pushing the car, immediately I noticed the car's behavior change when entering turn 2. Usually this corner needs a lot of trail braking for my car to get the rear rotates, but with the clubsports, the turn in reacts much faster and the tail really had a lot of tendency of rotation
with a small hint of trail braking. I was able to rotate the car much faster and ran a tighter line through turn 2.
Another surprise I had was at turn 6, the little dip. This is a hard corner for GTI since the perfect way of exiting this corner is to let the dip throw the car out to the right side of the exit and carries the speed.
With the clubsport, I was able to aim the turn in, maintain a little throttle before the dip and full gas on right after it. The car had a little four wheel drift but did not sacrifices any speed.
Overall, the clubsports performs with great damping around the track, I've yet to find the perfect settings, it still needs more seat time.
I was aiming for a 1:46 yesterday unfortunately there was too much traffic and I only had two clean laps, here's the best lap I had:
Final words:
Without a doubt, this is a great set of coilover. The biggest surprise to me is how good the damping matches the spring rate which translates to the wonderful ride.
The adjustment and construction of the shocks are all bilstein standard, leaves no disappointment.
Still yet to find the best settings for my car, but I'm very satisfied for now. :smile:
P.S, my PSS10 will be for sale soon, they are still in excellent condition!
I've had Bilstein pss10s for over 2 years and have been to 16 track days with them. They provide a great balance between road and track, rides firm but not too harsh, on track they give consistent performance that you would expect from the spring rates supplies from them. Rebound adjustment is also very easy, both front/rear does not require one to take off the wheels.
It has came to a point where I started to feel the limit of the pss10, I wish they could have supplied with much higher sprint rates. But simply swap out the spring will upset the shock's damping and I'll need to revalve the shocks, which adds another additional cost. Also the lack of a camber plate really limited my front camber settings.
Recently bilstein has introduced their new clubsports coilovers, after a long debating between bilstein clubsports vs KW clubsports, I decided to choose Bilstein given the easier adjustment for the rear shocks and my good experience with their product.
I ordered them from AWE Tuning, this is the box they came front, I'm actually gonna save the box this time because it has a signature of Walter Rohrl :thumbsup:
The supplied front spring rates are 571,
The rear springs are progressive with a secondary rate of 428,
Front almost doubles the rate of pss10 where the rear is about 100lb/in higher.
The front shocks are inverted so the rebound/compression adjustments are at the bottom of the shocks. The rebound adjustments are done by turning the red nob, where the compression adjustment requires to use a special key supplied which turns the black ring above the red nob. There's a red dot at the bottom of the shock to indicate which settings you are on. Both rebound/compression provides 10 different settings with 10 being the hardest.
Unlike the pss10s, the rear shocks adjustments are at the top of the shock. This will normally require you to take off the rear shock for any adjustment. However bilstein supplies a new set of rear mounts which are much smaller and provides enough room for adjustment with just rear wheels taking off.
I had the initial settings set at front 3/3 and rear 5/5.
Road review:
The moment I drove the car out of the parking lot of 034 motorsports, I was shocked at how the car feels:
My god it rides sooooo smooth! I usually had my old pss10 set at 3 front and 5 rear for road driving, but there's no where they rides as good as the clubsports kit.
I've had the preparation for hard ride due to the much higher spring, but I had no idea they would actually ride much much better. Going over the dips on bridge connector at high speed, the car does not upset nor bouncy, it's just smooth. And the camber plate does not add any additional noise. When driving on bad local roads at low speed, the car does not bouncy around, instead, the shock absorb the road imperfection very well. It was such a surprise to me.
I had the car aligned and corner balanced with the following settings:
Unfortunately, the front camber plate does not provide enough adjustment, they have a very little range.
Camber: Front -2.0, -2.1
Rear: -2.5, -2.4
Toe: Front 0.03, 0.04
Rear: -0.04,-0.04
The alignment tech said if I wanted to gain more camber I would need to have lower the car more, I had the front measured at 25.8" fender to ground and rear at 25.3"
Track review:
I dont have any performance review on road since I dont really drive the car hard on public roads, so here comes the review on track :wink:
Took it to Laguna Seca yesterday with a set of RS-3 (6th track days on them).
Had front set at 5/5 and rear at 7/7.
After the warm up lap, I started to pushing the car, immediately I noticed the car's behavior change when entering turn 2. Usually this corner needs a lot of trail braking for my car to get the rear rotates, but with the clubsports, the turn in reacts much faster and the tail really had a lot of tendency of rotation
with a small hint of trail braking. I was able to rotate the car much faster and ran a tighter line through turn 2.
Another surprise I had was at turn 6, the little dip. This is a hard corner for GTI since the perfect way of exiting this corner is to let the dip throw the car out to the right side of the exit and carries the speed.
With the clubsport, I was able to aim the turn in, maintain a little throttle before the dip and full gas on right after it. The car had a little four wheel drift but did not sacrifices any speed.
Overall, the clubsports performs with great damping around the track, I've yet to find the perfect settings, it still needs more seat time.
I was aiming for a 1:46 yesterday unfortunately there was too much traffic and I only had two clean laps, here's the best lap I had:
Final words:
Without a doubt, this is a great set of coilover. The biggest surprise to me is how good the damping matches the spring rate which translates to the wonderful ride.
The adjustment and construction of the shocks are all bilstein standard, leaves no disappointment.
Still yet to find the best settings for my car, but I'm very satisfied for now. :smile:
P.S, my PSS10 will be for sale soon, they are still in excellent condition!
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