There is only one way to measure the ride height of your car when you have coil overs installed. It is by measuring the distance between the seat of the spring (le little one at the bottom) and the bolt that attaches the perch to the suspension knuckle. Beside corner weighting, this is the most accurate one, the only one. This is the way it is specified in Bilstein documents.

Why you ask? Because having the car at the "proper height" (bottom of car / ground) doesn't mean that the nut bellow the bottom spring is set up at the correct height! Remember the citroens driving only on 3 wheels? Ride height could have been correct, you just had one wheel missing!

So the only way to measure your ride height is by removing each wheel, using a measuring tape or caliper and the tools provided with the suspension kit to adjust the vertical position of the nut on the damper (1 hour work, easy to do). This is the way it is specified in Bilstein documents and it makes sense.

My own experience was that my car was first too low, very unstable and uncomfortable at any speed and when we put her back at a more sensible height, the behavior of the car was transformed. The car is now a blast to drive. I don't track. I only want a small road and autobahn machine. And this is what I finally got.

The noise that you've been hearing is most probably the result of the wrong setup of your suspension.

 

Thanks for your feedback! What setup are you running (coilivers, droplinks, sways, wheel/tires)? Also, how much did you lower your Turbo?

 

hello sub-zero!

As written in my provided link it is : all stock with all new oem parts (arms, bushings, links, ...) but standard (comfort) damptronic bilstein coil overs.

 

Hi, thanks for the feedback; very interesting point. Have you measured your car's height using the "Porsche method" (bolt to ground)? I am very interested in what your numbers are, so I could compare to mine.

I should point out one advantage of the Porsche method, not only is this specifically recommended by Porsche, it tells you the change from stock height, which is what I am really interested in. In other words, you have the original stock height (published and known) by Porsche method, and then you have height after Bilstein. It is not the absolute number, but the *change* that is of interest to me.

Why is this change important? Because it tells me how much deviation from original 3D geometry I have caused with lowering. For those interested: All the links in the suspension swing in an arc, as you altered height (vertical), you will also affect lateral position, and this IMHO means trouble if over-done. This is what I mean by altering the 3D geometry of the original suspension system.

Essentially I have no doubt that your Bilstein method is correct (fairly certain this is how my tech set it up too), but for "monitoring" purpose, I believe it is still a good idea to measure using Porsche method afterwards to confirm what the change from reference value is.

 

No problm Can. I just wanted to add my brick to the incredibly useful chapters that were written by Alex uk, you and many others.

The porsche method makes sense if you consider that we are not supposed to have height adjustable springs. With stock setup you can't have for instance front right wrongly setup 20 mm lower than front left. With coil others it can happen. And if it's the same on the rear just the opposit, you won't even notice it visually because the car will seat mainly on front left and rear right wheels and still perfectly level as one would like to.

No i haven't measured the height of my tt since it is with this set up, but I have noticed one thing common with all the cars on this forum whom owners say they have a wonderfull handling: they all look the same if you look at their pictures. Just slightly lower than stock. Not too much. Alex, yours, mine now and a few others.

If one's car looks like my car was on my avatar, it is definitely too low and the behavior of the car is, as most of us know now, terrible.

 

Had the setup on the Turbo checked out and sure enough, they had reversed the swaybars settings. I've been driving for a few days now and it feels pretty good. Handles like its riding on rails...totally insane! We actually ended setting the swaybars to med front and hard rear. It feels neutral with slight oversteer.... Very nice. Haven't had the chance to drive hard or go to the track yet so I expect a little more tweaking in the near future. I will post alignment settings soon; Very GT2-like with slight modification of caster and camber.