For the record, I painted my measuring location with green paint.

 

From cannga's Bilstein review:

Front:



Rear:

 

Neither technique is more accurate than the other, per se. The Porsche method is more reproducible, because all the measurements are taken at a standard point of reference. So, when JoeBlow in California measures his wife's car, he can compare it to Hans' in Germany, more importantly the various porsche service centers at dealers world wide can use the same nomenclature. However, as long as you are doing the measurements at a uniform position on the fender, or what have you, your measures are just as valid as the guy crawling under his wife's car. The same variables apply to both methods; namely tire pressure and ground condition. The fender method is the tire/wheel industry standard because it can be applied to multiple different cars, as Damon from TR mentioned. There is nothing magical about the Porsche engineers picking a certain chassis position to measure ride height, only magical thinking
Where am I going wrong?

 

You went wrong because part of your paragraph is correct (green) and part is not (red); part is logical, and part is "curious."

Have you tried to measure using the technique mentioned by Damon/Tirerack? There are multiple points of difficulty and potential inaccuracy with respect to marking fender and center of wheel -- please go back to my posts above and read it again carefully. In fact, if I were a customer of Tirerack, I would insist that the tech use the Porsche defined technique.

The original diagram came from Porsche race oriented forum (the point is these people sort of know what they are doing ) long before we talk about this stuff here. So let's not waste time and reinvent the wheel here.

Just because you don't know something and have never used it before, or (ex ) Farnbacher Loles didn't do it, doesn't make it magical thinking. Even Farnbacher Loles could make mistake & your measurement just has not been done the most accurate way (ok? yes, accurate? no). Look at the post and pictures posted by the 2 moderators on this very thread, GT3 Chuck and eclou the second, bbywu. One would think they know something, no?

 

You know can, you can make a comment without being a complete A hole.

 

^^^It seems to me that you would like to post your opinion, but doesn't want to hear counter points. Sorry, that's not going to work.
If you like me to ignore your post, then please state so whenever you are questioning a point in my post. (That's weird, but whatever.) You seem so stressed out by these "nothing" discussions -- maybe I should do that from now on, put you on my ignore list.

As far as "personal attack," it's your choice -- I am not joining you. (Surely a sign that the argument has been lost; the last person who did that to me is some kid who is a GTR fan, in much more colorful language! ) Really, relax man!

 

Back on topic it seems as though the type of sway bar is also having an impact here. Not sure if this should be a separate thread but it would be helpful to know the characteristics of the different sway bars available and what makes one better than the other?

For example, would GT2 sways be any better or worse than something else out there?

 

I'd just like to state for the record that I'm a nobody. The bulk of my knowledge comes from great members who have taken time to post and educate others. While I have had some good times at Road America, my driving, suspension, tuning, and mechanical knowledge is pretty limited. Furthermore, I think Chuck asked if I was interested in being a mod because of my general disdain for Nike and fake Gucci ads spammed across our forum.

As far as Chris' comment about measurement reproducibility, I should probably mention that after my car was delivered from Ruf, I recorded the measurement using body frame points, as well as wheel center cap/fender points. I knew the springs would sag...after 3 months...I found the change to be exactly 1:1 when I compared the techniques. I believe both cannga technique and Chris' comments are valid.

There was a pretty good thread about this here:

https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...-sway-bar.html

I don't think there was a consensus, however, the bladed sways for the front are now available from Tarett.

 

Chris (the one with the green smilie), got your PM re. suspension, please give me some time to respond.

Can't believe bbywu remembers that thread above Who has the stiffest rear adjustable sway bar? -- did you read the thread's last page where question was raised about front bar stiffness? That is why I believe that sway bar's specs (how much stiffer compared to stock) be available from all vendors. So far I think only GMG is posting theirs, but I hope others will follow suit as well.

If I were to by sway bars now, my top 2 choices would *probably* be H&R or GMG. H&R because many people and tuners seem happy with it (it's been out the longest). GMG because they reveal specs, are hollow, and made by Eibach. But other choices like TPC, Tarett, etc., can't be ruled out either. There simply aren't enough reliable data with sway bars and it remains the most "mysterious" decision.

 

My previous comment on sway bar, post#72:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...d-turbo-5.html:

For those new to sway bar, remember that it serves two equally important functions:
1. Anti roll
2. Adjust understeer/oversteer
While most people know about 1, #2 is not as well known. Indeed, adjustment of sway bars is frequently used at the track to affect understeer/oversteer behavior of a car. If you stiffen the front, you have understeer, if you stiffen the rear, you have oversteer.

To reduce the inherent understeer/neutral steer of a 4WD car, and to have some oversteer (desirable to professional drivers at the track), the usual recommended setting for a track car could/would be full soft front, full stiff rear. For a street car, I've found soft or med front and med rear to be a good compromise for the GMG bar, but of course this is strictly personal preference, no right or wrong and depends on the rest of the components in the car.

As far as H&R or GMG sways: I have no idea how they are different from each other with respect to stiffness/performance. The only reason I went with GMG was at the time I was going to go with the whole GMG package (later changed my mind to Bilstein PSS10). As it turned out, the GMG bar has 3 desirable characteristics:
1. Made by Eibach (a gold standard)
2. Hollow
3. Specs of stiffness increase over the stock bar, in percentage, clearly published. No secret and much applauded.

GMG Front Sway: 3 settings: soft, medium, stiff. The front soft setting is 15% stiffer than stock, middle 25%, and stiff 35%.
GMG Rear Sway: 3 settings: soft, medium, stiff. The rear soft setting is 30% stiffer than stock, middle around 45%, and stiff is 60%.

The GMG sway was actually the first suspension component installed in my car as I wanted to learn step by step and wanted to find out what it does by itself. To my surprise, I found that the anti roll effect is very subtle, NOTHING like the transformation of the PSS10. At the medium settings, leaning is reduced a little, but more importantly, the steering feels tighter. There is less free play to the steering wheel as you rock it back and forth for example.
One negative effect I *have* found is that the rear setting, if at full stiff could affect ride significantly. The rear becomes stiff & very bouncy and for me unacceptably hard when the sway bar is set to rear stiff.

Sway bar remains the most "mysterious" of suspension components to me, since no one except GMG releases their specs and there aren't enough hard data so you rely mostly on empirical words of mouth. In the Turbo, I believe some people also use GT3 rear sway, and keep the stock front (the only problem I have with this is I don't think how each setting in the GT3 compares to the stock Turbo bar as there is no spec). The stuffs from Tarett engineering http://www.tarett.com/items/996-997-products/list.htm are of course always recommended and always interesting.<!-- google_ad_section_end --> <!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

 

Would it affect corner balance if I adjust the ride height (ex: lower 10mm) after?

 

Yup, you do a corner balance by fine tuning each corners ride height to distribute weight evenly - a bit like extending a wobbly table's legs so they all touch the ground the same amount. You do this process AFTER you have set your new ride height target (-10mm). The balance will then probably make each corner +/- 1mm.

 

I measured the ride heights at the front, they are the same. But the rear driver side is about 3mm more than the other side. Is that normal for a corner balanced car? Can I adjust it without affecting the balance?

 

If the height discrepancy in your car is a result of corner balancing, you **will** affect the balance by adjusting the height. Did you have a corner balance?

Corner balance aims to make the weights of LFront + RRear = RFront + LRear, with the weight of the driver on the car left front seat for US cars. And the way they do this is by adjusting the height at each corner. So after a corner balance, the height will or might come out uneven. If you have any question, best thing is to bring the car back to your tuner.

I always wonder what a typical height discrepancy of a corner balance is. And which corner ends up highest and lowest. In your car it is 3 mm? Right rear or left rear? In Alex's car 1 mm?

 

measure it with you in it..that will bring the drivers side down and your drivers front might be lower than the passenger front and the drivers rear will be closer to the passenger rear