Some time back I had looked at the Bilstein pss9's, but it wasn't in the budget then. But now I have some money burning a whole in my pocket, so .....

There were quite a few threads in the search about the PSS9's back then as I recall, but with the revised software for the forum, apparantly the search is not yet ready.

But I'm looking to move on this and need some input.

I have a 01 TT with quite a few mods, never dynoed, but would guess somewhat slightly north of 500 flywheel hp.

The PSS9's are appealing to me as, from what I understand, the car can be lowered from about 3/4 inch clear down to 2 plus, and has 9 "ride" settings. I'm mostly a street driver, but am looking to track the car this spring, at least once, and who knows from there.

So, emphasis #1 is to lower the stance, probably about 1.5 inches, mostly for looks, but I'm sure there are also some gains via lower center of gravity, etc. But, don't want the ride to be any, or a at least not very much more harsh than stock for my street driving. So, using the least agressive setting, would the comfort be about equal to the stock equipment? Then I could crank up the settings for the track(s) events.

Overall experience with the pss9's, and of course, info as compared to other ideas would be very much appreciated.

Sorry the search didn't work, as I may have been able to get much of this info from the archives.

Thanks, Bill

 

https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...threadid=10493

and

https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...ighlight=moton

 

The PSS9's definitely let you go much, much lower. With my 19's, my front chi n spoiler is scraping pretty much every driveway. As for ride quality--vastly superior to stock, and I have mine set at 1 (stiffest).

I've had mine for 1500 miles and may be swapping them for Motons shortly, so if you want a slightly used set, let me know.

 

Motons... I 'll make sure a few folks give you a ride or two with those. Asbsolutely amazing set up. I find with my JRZ's I ended up just leaving the settings alone since it's a bit of a production to adjust them. With the Motons you can so easily tweak the front and rear that we find owners doing so during track events and then back on the street etc... It's fun being able to go from a track-DE-level setting to a nice plush street setting with only a few turns

 

for the money.. they r great.. pss9s unless u have $6k plus install to spend.

 

I agree, the PSS9's are excellent. The stock setup is terrible on these cars, I am totally amazed that Porsche lets these cars out of the factory with the stock setup they have. It maybe fine for the glass smooth autobahn but for NA it's crap.... I know they have the X73 package or whatever.... but still...stock is totally crap!.

If you do the PSS9's it will be one of the best mods you do to your car period, again for normal daily commute stuff it's perfect and does very well when you get on it the mountain passes!..trust me I know!.. I am sure others will agree.

If you track the car a lot then you may want Motons....or the like....but I don't think it's worth the 5-6K price of admission. I would put extra cash into some kind of EVOMS stage mod.

BBB

 

without reading that entire thread, did we ever figure out why KPV had so many problems?

i have the pss9 setup and it seems to fine so far.

 

Deputy, KPV's problems stemmed from the fact that he wanted to lower his turbo to GT2 specs, which he found out was not possible with the stock PSS9's. It's really a good read and one of the best analysis of how a performance coilover should work.

 

i'm a little confused on that point. gt2 ride height, according to the pca article, is around 25ish inches, front and rear. a porsche 996 is around 27ish inches front and rear. i spoke to bilstein and they said i would have not have any problem lowering my car 35mm for the front and 25mm in the rear and that that was their max recommendation. which i did (well, actually slightly lower). this isn't much higher than gt2 ride height and plenty low enough for me. i am having no problems with my suspension at this height and it rides/handles great.

is it possible he was using a different gt2 spec and really "slammed" it low? it doesn't take much to lower it to gt2 ride height as that's not really all that low. i can only assume he had a defective set or he went much lower than what i found was spec for the gt2.

 

If all you do is cruise around on smooth roads /freeways, PSS9's are Ok.

If you plan on dive bombing back roads, forget it. You will hit the bump stops.

I'm going to MOTONS's.

 

It is a pretty common 'issue' across the board for all makes when regarding the PSS9s. I've seen it first hand with BMWs. They are not meant to drop the car a lot. If you go too low, in this case GT2 height, you don't have adequate enough shock travel for the suspenion to perform properly.
It is likely you could be experiencing this problem and not know it, as you don't have a frame of reference from which to compare it to. These issues are also more pronounced on the track.
You should really read KPV's write ups.

 

Deputy, he was riding, virtually, on the bumpstops. KPV was using the euro spec Bilstein Pss9's and not the US spec, by the way. Other derivatives of the Pss9 are made to spec for RUF and FVD, for example, do not suffer from this problem.

 

YEa that's one thing i was surprised about going from slammed m3 to row suspension 996tt.. The handling is great because of traction from awd, but can get very wiggly on turns, the suspension does suck.. Must upgrade for 996tt's, cant wait

 

i guess my point was that bilstein says you can drop it 35mm front and 25mm rear (at least on the 996 NA) and you will have no problems and will not hit the bump stops. the bilstein rep i spoke to said that there will be adequate suspension travel if you stay within their specs. he also said that their setup is NOT designed to slam the car like a race suspension, just lower it slightly with significantly improved handling.

so, are some of you (josh/spidey) saying that i'm going to have problems even if stay within the max recommended drop? i just have a hard time buying that, as this is a very popular suspension upgrade and KPV was the first one that I heard of to have these sort of issues. This is not my first car where I've done suspension upgrades and not my first set of ride height adj. coilovers. I can tell you that I AM NOT riding on bumpstops now at my current ride height.

I am happy with my current ride height. It's perfect, for me, on the street with 19's. Maybe Bilstein didn't tell KPV that he couldn't go that low. I haven't read the whole post. It's not really Bilstein's fault if they give a recommended max drop and people go well below it. The bilstein rep told me, quote: "The PSS9 setup is not a race suspension. If you want to slam your car, then this is not the product for you". Personally, I'm not a big fan of tucking the tires up into the fenders unless you spend more time on the track than the street. I'll leave that look to the Civics

 

NOT! Only if you're lowered too low. If you upgrade your sways to GT3 as I did, the car handles great. Track and AutoX as good as a GT3 (minus the hp!)