Hello,

After some time of having my Turbo S with a JRZ RS Pro suspension, I decided I needed something a little softer and less noisy for my road trips / rough roads.

So I went with the "next best option", and went with a KW V3 with Lift Kit. 9,000$.

So we install the suspension, and I want to say we installed it perfectly, this is NOT an installation error or issue. This suspension is not hard to install.

Suspension looks great, works great, and feels great, on COMPLETELY PERFECT SURFACES. I drove my car around the city, highway, no problems, all happy.

Then, road trip with friends... Canyon roads, 3-4 hours each way. Suspension starts great, and as soon as I get on the canyon roads, wow... This thing is just s*it... I'm sorry, but it is.

This thing did NOTHING but bottom out the entire road trip, making a loud BANG noise in the front every time. I was worried, so I went slower... We stopped and I adjusted settings to see if it would help, rebound, etc... Nope... The spring is **** and it's made for perfect surfaces that have absolutely no rough parts or ups and downs.

I had NO PROBLEMS, EVER, with stock suspension, or JRZ, when it comes to road trips.

Alright, so we make some adjustments, and I keep driving... I'm behind a GTR, a GT2, both with stock suspensions, and a Turbo S just like mine, but with JRZ. We are going around 240-250 on a straight road, then suddenly, a part of the road had a slight part where it went down, then back up, very soft, ALL other cars went by it with 0 issues... My car? No... My car went freaking flying, landed, ALL 4 springs bottomed out, car started going sideways all over the road, and I am thankful I could somehow control it... Or I wouldn't be telling the story...

What happened to the car??? Well, here's some pictures;





Scraped rear bumper trim.




Huge hit here.



Notice where the rubber things? Notice where they are?



Front spring.



.....



Front spring.



Bottom part of Turbo.





Front spring marked.



I'll probably get people saying I drove on some incredibly ****ty road, but no, it was a perfectly normal canyon road, I've done this road over 10 times with JRZ and 5 or so with OEM... And never ever had an issue like this.

I have a video, taken from the GTR, showing the road trip from beginning to end, and I'll post a part of it if you guys want to see the type of roads we drive in. They're not Nurburgring, but they're fine.


My point with this thread is to share my experience with this suspension... If you somehow have some rough roads, or anything that isn't perfect surfaces, think twice about this thing.

For now, I'm going back to JRZ, and getting over the 9,000$ down the drain, and be thankful I didn't break anything on my car.

 

Are the pictures not working? I'm uploading from phone, anything I gotta do?

 

I had the same issues. Had my V3 with lift kit for over a 3 years. The front spring is toooo soft. It is a progressive spring that's under 200 lbs. I talked about this here before and you can see the spring coils scraping each other on full compression. I removed the front spring and found an eibach linear spring that would fit over the strut. Eibach spring is 425 lbs I think. Much less front end dive at the track on threshold braking. I also installed appropriate monoball top mounts. It kept sounding like the front shocks were bottoming out before. Also make sure you don't lower the car too much. Originally mine was lowered beyond kw recommendations. I had the car raised to their max lowered height and now there's more suspension travel thus less bottoming out with the new spring. Can't lower the car too much with this kit which sucks. We called kw and they said nothing was wrong with the front spring and that's how it's meant to be. Poor design and engineering if you ask me.

I will be getting jrz too. What I recommend is you retrofit the lift kit system on the jrz. That would be best. I get noise too but would imagine it's more than you as I have the full RSS tarmac kit, gmg sways, and monoball top mounts. .

Good luck.

 

your pics are not working, i am curious to see position of springs.

Like chris mentioned, i also thought about consequences to lowering beyond recommended levels.

 

I've got a 996Turbo, so it's a different car. But I really like my V3's. Did you have your car aligned professionally after the coilovers were installed?

 

Pictures fixed! By the way car is lowered to KW's recommended specs. Not any lower! It's even higher than my JRZ setup.

I'll continue to post pictures of what I find on the car as we are taking this thing down and going back to JRZ.

 

Seems like I lost the rubber thing on the left side of rear wheel;




Never before have I even hit my car, the front lip I'm surprised didn't break, it's the Werks carbon fiber lip, it's scraped. But I won't post any pictures of that as that can be scraped easily.

 

My car is very low, lower than recommended and i have driven hard. The only issue i have currently is a small squeaking sound front the front passenger side due to chassis flex.

For your car to go all that way down and scrape so much is not right when you are within recommended settings. You need to email those pics to KW in germany direct, possible mixup with springs (just a hunch).

Very much interested to know what they will say.

 

I didn't see your pics until you fixed them, but yes that's how my front springs look too. They are so soft that on compression the coils are sitting on each other. I forgot to mention this was so bad I bent both my front tarrett drop links. If you want to swap out the front spring and put on some monoball top mounts I can send you the info. It gives the best of both worlds and was a cheap fix.

 

my rear coil over pic attached when on a lift. Your foam part sits deeper.

 

My foam part is all the way pushed to the top, you can barely move it... It's pushed there by the force the shock did, it completely compressed, car pretty much hit the ground...

This is unacceptable on a performance suspension. Not even the OEM had these issues. The spring is just WAY too soft...

I haven't checked the drop links yet.

I'm taking intercoolers apart as well since I'm changing them too, good thing as the impact also broke one of the silicone hoses of the lower part that go to the Turbo.




You can see the marking where the tire hit the inner part of the fender.

 

Finished my intercooler install today, we will be taking down the KW tomorrow and putting on JRZ again.

I'll post pictures if I find anything new.

By the way, car was aligned properly, no issues there.

I always thought the springs of the KW V3 were 900 or so lbs, from what I saw on another thread. But they're not, they must be 200 or less to bottom out like this.

I'm glad I don't break anything but still very upset the under side of my car looks like if I had ran over a sidewalk or something...

 

Interesting, good to know. I have KW V1's on my E36 M3 and love them (not even the V3's). But the V1 spring rates are much higher than the factory springs on that car, so the thing doesn't move at all. Don't think I'm going to do any suspension mods on this car or I would've gotten the coupe to start with, but I'll know to not go the KW route if I ever do.

 

That's terrible and worries me that I could suffer similar damage as I also have the HLS2 kit. So true about the road surfaces. I know it bottoms up front and needs a spring change but I haven't seen issues like this with the rear. TT Chris, please share the detailed info on the Eibach spring you are using up front. I'd also like to know if the lift can be retrofit on the JRZ's (still need a spring).


KW should fix this. Your car and recall the springs for the safety of everyone else.

 

I'm very surprised to hear many of you are also having the bottoming out issue, as I was told by Dan @ Vivid Racing I was 1 in 1000 having problems with this suspension when I told him about it, funny...

For you guys that are even considering changing suspension, just get a Moton or JRZ, adjust it to softest settings if you don't want it too hard, and be done with it. Peace of mind knowing you have a suspension that will respond the way it's supposed to on any surface and under any circumstance, and not bottom out and throw you off the road with the slightest bump...