Give me a sanity check about my PSS9's
 

I am trying to figure out how low my PSS9's will go before hitting the bumpstops. I called Bilstein and they said the max is 25-35mm lower than stock. The guy must have been an idiot, because 1.) Which is it? 25 or 35mm? and 2.) This sounds way too conservative because 35 mm is only a 1.3" drop. I also read what amounted to a thesis on the PSS9's, which was very useful, but it applied to a turbo kit, which is different from the C2 kit. Who knows if the same applies for the C2.

Here's my theory: If I lower the car ALL the way, then put the wheels on and move it back and forth, I will then be resting on the bumpstops, correct? Assuming nothing else is holding the car up, I can then measure the height and determine that this is where I would bottom out on the bump stops. Then if I raise the car to a reasonable height, I can then subtract the difference in height and determine my maximum suspension travel. Does this theory hold water?

are you in socal talk to the guys at lucent they are pretty knowledgeable regarding eth pss9's talk to arling(20c4s) here on 6speed..

Yep, I bought the PSS9's from Arling. He recommended that as long as I can stick two fingers between the tire and the fender, I should be okay. What I would like to determine for my own knowledge is, how much travel before I bottom out? Perhaps I am being a bit of a mad scientist about this, but it would be a nice-to-know.

35mm. they're not designed for slamming the car. get a race suspension if you want to go that low. the bilstein's are just a really good street suspension.

I'm not trying to slam the car. Allow me to quote myself:

"What I would like to determine for my own knowledge is, how much travel before I bottom out?"

"35mm." doesn't determine how much suspension travel is left. I believe manually bottoming out the suspension and then determining the difference between bottomed-out and normal height will determine the maximum travel.

i'll quote myself again. "35mm". :)

bilstein says you can can lower a 996 35mm with their pss9 susp. and maintain enough travel for the suspension tor work properly.

if you want to go lower, get something else. that is what the manuf. says you can safely do with their setup. i am not sure why you are trying to determine suspension travel distance and bumpstop distance. what are you trying to accomplish?

Okay, I'll lower it 35 mm. So how much before I bottom out?

do you mean bottom out as in the car bottoming out on a driveway/road? if you are again referring to the bumpstops, you won't....

if you are referring to the bump stops, you shouldn't bottom out. that is the point of only lowering it 35mm. i'm quite sure they're erring way on the side of caution as they know we will push it a little further. based on that, i'm sure you'll be a long way off from hitting bump stops at a lowering height of 35mm.

my car is lowered 35mm all the way around and it looks great. maybe a half inch or a little more between the tires and the fenders. perfect for me and there is no rubbing.

does anybody know the hight of a stock C4S(from the front lip) kinda wanna double check after reading this....

Wait a sec, i can only stick 2 fingers between the tire & fender on the rear of my car & it is not lowered nor does it have the sport kit from Porsche... what gives?

Also, is the 35mm from stock height w/ the sport suspension from Porsche or w/o it?

yea on my C4 i can get 3 fingers in the rear, the front, 4 fingers. will be getting dropped soon.

Maybe you've got fat sausage fingers :p Everyone's got different fingers, so obviously this is only meant as a quick check, not as a scientific measurement. The 35mm figure is what Bilstein barked at me when I asked him this simple question. The guy seemed too bothered to talk to me at length about it so I did not ask about whether it was w/ the sport suspension or without it. But he did not ask me whether I have the sport suspension, so I have to assume it was a figure given under the assumption that I have the non-sport. Having said that, you can get away with lowering it more than 35mm, but you will obviously sacrifice some suspension travel. The point of this thread was to figure out how much more is left. Don't know.

how much is it costing you guys to have pss9's installed? I got a qute for $150 per corner.

That's the right ballpark, $600-$650 for the whole job. I ended up installing it myself and it took 6 hours. If I had to do it again, it would only take 3-4. I spent 2 hours just figuring out how to get access to the top mounting nuts for the rear struts on the cabriolet. :rolleyes: