This is my first post as I've been lurking for about a year so I'd like to begin by thanking everyone for all the great info I've received in that time!

Now, onto the question / situation re: my 2008 911 Turbo.

A few weeks ago I had Bilstein Damptronic's & H&R Sway Bars installed. The car was lowered about an inch, corner balanced and aligned. Amazing difference!

This weekend while doing "very spirited driving" in an environment designed for such, the PASM warning light came on and reported a Sport Mode failure. The dampers remained in sport mode but the other enhancements reverted to normal. Since then the fault is sometimes cleared when the car is restarted but as soon as it moves the warning light comes on again.

The installer took a peek this morning, discovered 4 fault codes (presumably one for each coilover), quickly checked the front PASM connections which seemed okay and reset the codes. Once again, the faults cleared, the buttons were reactivated but as soon as the car moved, the failure warning reappeared. Tomorrow he will begin to do a comprehensive evaluation and seriously get into it.

I did a search in the archives and there is a similar thread from a couple of years ago. I'm wondering if there are any updates or if anyone has any ideas that could save us some time and money running this down. Many thanks,

 

Take a look...

https://www.6speedonline.com/forums/...bilsteins.html

 

Thanks. I was hoping for something that ended with "and they lived happily ever after...."

I'm getting a bad feeling about this.

 

Im just glad I went with the GMG springs! Best of luck.

 

Sorry to hear about his. My vote:

1. Don't even bother trying to diagnose this yourself. Call Bilstein, West Coast, for suggestion: 1-858-386-5900
2. If 1 is not to your satisfaction or doesn't work (whatever that Bilstein recommends), ask to switch to brand new Bilstein with PASM from your vendor, or from Bilstein warranty department (which is extremely generous in my experience).
3. If you don't want to do 2, then there is still an excellent solution:
A. Bilstein B16, the non damptronic version
B. KW Variant 3. PASM won't work here either but not necessary.

Both A and B are outstanding solutions and in the long run much better than lowering springs, which may, and have, caused failure of stock dampers and may end up costing you even more money eventually.
Even choice 3, without PASM, is excellent because as you've noticed, once you've tried after-market coilover with stiffer spring and damper, there is no going back to stock. I have NEVER been a fan of PASM anyway so I myself have no problem with choice 3. Good luck.

 

Can,
Thanks for your input. I've enjoyed and learned a lot from your suspension threads posted here and on RL over the past couple of years. We'll see what we find tomorrow when we can get a good look at all the components. If the problem isn't obviously evident or the Durametric continues to indicate a quadruple failure (which is about as likely as getting struck by an asteroid this evening) then we'll ring up Bilstein and see what they have to say. I purchased the set through Mike at AWE Tuning and he's been wonderful to work with so aside from the probable hassle factor, I'm confident we'll get this resolved one way or another. Thanks again!

 

Excellent suggestions Can.

b

 

Thanks for saving me the trouble of digging up that thread, Bob. Yup, that was me. I had problems mirroring the ones you describe.
In the interest of attempting to save yourself some money, try contacting Bilstein as Can suggested. But based on my horrible experience, you're better off trashing the whole thing and going with ANYONE ELSE OTHER THAN BILSTEIN as they will not be one ounce of help to you.

After seemingly countless days in the shop, thousands of dollars in parts and labor, I finally took heed of the advice of some members here and cut my losses. I ditched the Crapsteins and went with KW V3's. If I did that at the first sign of trouble, I could have saved myself a ton of money and aggravation.
Good luck. Hope your story ends better than mine.

 

This is very interesting.

The car went to the installer this morning with PASM Warning lite ablaze and was disassembled enough to check all the Damptronic connections, harness routing, etc. The car was put up on the lift and the inspection did not reveal any identifiable problems.

Next, we hooked up the computer running Durametric software and found five PASM fault codes of unknown origin. Durametric was called and they said they never heard of anything like that before but would do some more checking if we sent the particular screen containing the information which we did. (We also cleared a "service due" warning while we were at it.)

We then called Bilstein tech support and left a voice mail requesting a return call.

We buttoned the car back up and I returned home to await a call from my installer after he received additional info from the aforementioned parties. In short, we ruled a couple of potential gremlins out but did nothing to fix the problem.

As I drove out of the shop, imagine my surprise when no PASM warning light appeared and the car felt like it was in "normal" mode. The sport mode and suspension buttons illuminated when depressed and I cycled through them several time on my way home. Everything now seems to be working fine although we really don't know what we did or if we did anything at all.

Or did we?

I called my installer with the news and his hypothesis is that perhaps the fault(s) were triggered by a sensor (probably on the strut) inside the damper traveling outside of its intended range (think big G-load and max compression) during my spirited driving session. When it faulted, the sensor could not return to a normal position as the damper froze in its stiffest position. So when the car was put on the lift this morning the damper was fully extended allowing the sensor to get back within normal limits and essentially reset. (I'm not very mechanically oriented so that's probably not a very eloquent explanation but you get the drift of the thought process.) Anyway, he will run this theory by Bilstein and see if they think it's credible. If it is, we can then see if it happens again during the next spirited driving session or if it was a one-time event. If it reoccurs the solution might be as easy as raising the car a little bit to provide some more travel (which is easy to do but sort of compromises the point of lowering the car) or, potentially, see if Bilstein will cut down the struts an estimated 1/4 inch or so to keep this sensor within range. This keeps the car lowered to its current height (desirable) but obviously is much more complicated solution. But it could be a good winter project while the car is in storage.

Any thoughts? Perhaps we are being completely delusional and the root cause is something entirely different and the next time I fire up the car it will fail again. But. I'll keep you updated as we learn more.

 

All I could say is "take the money and run"! Electronics components are truly frightening when they don't work: no one seems to know what's going on and scorch-earth is sometimes the only way out. In our Porsche another example is the TPMS -- a mind completely its own. (But when they work, it is a beautiful thing.)

Did you unplug and plug the coilover wire connectors during the re-check? I would think a loose connection is the most likely cause.
Did Bilstein call back and did they have anything to say?

BTW to the best of my knowledge there is no sensor inside the coilover. The wire that goes to the coilover simply controls the opening of the internal valves - open valve to reduce dampening force, close to increase. In other words I don't think there is height or length sensor inside the coilover to trigger the alarm; but I am merely speculating here.
The pitch/yaw/roll/etc. sensors I believe are on the suspension arms. I vaguely recall seeing something on the driver's side front lower control arm that looks suspiciously like one.

 

We've been in contact with Bilstein, Durametric and AWE and all companies are actively working with us to resolve the issue(s). You're right about there not being a sensor in the damper per Bilstein. They tend to think that a coilover bottomed out which caused the initial fault(s). Raising the car a twitch or shortening the struts could resolve that issue if it comes up again. We've now cleared all the faults (of unknown origin) and the systems are fully operational once again. I plan to take the car for an extended drive this afternoon and see what happens. If it faults reoccur, then we really need to find out if Durametric can identify the origin of the fault codes. If not, then I need to find a shop with PIWIS capability and see if that if reveals more specific info. But for right now I am keeping my fingers crossed and hoping this was a one-off thing. More as it becomes available......

 

I had the bilsteins, went back to gmg springs. They are much better on the track without a doubt, gmg is the way to go. I don't know of anybody who has actually had a stock strut with a gmg spring fail, I once had a pasm light but that was a sensor.
Take the money.

 

Update: The car and I did ~75 miles in the mtns. this afternoon and everything was fine.

I will probably go to the track next weekend which will be the telling event. I have to say that the folks at Bilstein, Durametric and AWE have been outstanding. While no one has been able to pinpoint the problem per se, everyone's contributions have taught us a great deal. If the problem crops up again, we will deal with it.

"It's unwise to try to fix something if you don't understand what's broken."

But, "If we can't fix it, it ain't broke; we don't !@#$ around!!"

Best,

 

Last week end I went for a ride with my friends we went to a golf club that thad some kind of inverted speed bumps to reduce speed at the club entrance really big, I cross very slow and not strait to prevent damage since my TT is really low at that point I was in the SPORT MODE.We went inside had lunch etc and when I re started the engine I had the SPORT MODE FAILURE code,so I cant get the hard setting for the shocks.
I have Techart/Bilstein PASM C.O. shocks for 2 years and I love them this is the first time I had a problem.The failure is still on,tomorrow I will go to my dealer to get the car raised like before mentioned and reset with the PIWIS.
Thanks for the advise....

 

Good luck tomorrow! We ended up resetting the fault codes three times before they cleared for good. Since then, I've been back to the track, put a couple of thousand miles on the car and had no issues. I am told that Durametric continues to work on the "unknown origin" part of the problem but that will require some reworking of their software and will take time to achieve. Perhaps the PIWIS can clear the code(s) the first time and provide some definitive information as to their source. Please keep us posted if you learn anything new. Best,