OHLINS - which way to stiffen?
 

I have installed the OHLINS R&T on my 20017 997.1 Turbo. I want to know how to stiffen the front and the rear’s. Does clockwise turning make it stiffer or the counter clockwise? I also find the supplied springs soft. The car is bottoming at high speeds bumps/dips. What are the supplied spring rates? Can I upgrade to stiffer springs?

First thing to note is the setup instructions are junk. Set them up as they suggest, and the car is too low (unless you only drive on smooth tracks),... and you have lots of droop travel and almost no bump travel,.. so you'll bottom out on almost anything. You'll want to crank in 1/2 dozen turns of spring pre-load to get the bump/droop ratio more to where it should be,.. and then back off the ride height adjustments to get the ride height you want. Their settings lower the car by 3/8" in the front, and 3/4" in the rear. I ended up almost at stock height in front,. and down 3/8" in the back..

Whatever total stroke you think you have,.... You'll want 50-60% of that to be bump on a street car.

As far as dampenig clicks,... clockwise is stiffer.

A good starting point is 15 clicks out. Though I found 13 clicks out was better in the rear.

In front I couldn't find a sweet spot. 15 clicks out in front caused the car to just go up and down over bumps instead of absorbing them. And at 17 clicks out the suspension was finally working,.. but I got bobble-head (extra jiggles after a bump). So I had my shock guy take a bit of compression dampening out of the fronts and now I run them at 13 or 14 clicks out.

We also found 20mm of droop-limiter spacers in there. Ohlins will tell you those shocks have 80mm of travel. It's a lie. They have just 59mm as they come, (v.s. like 130+ of the stock shocks).. and removing the internal droop limiters got me to 79mm.


It's a process.

@Duckstu Thank you so the great information. what do you mean by "clicks out"? I have set the OHLINS to maintain stock car height since we have very bad roads in and around Mumbai, INDIA. I am also planning to change the spring rates to 550 front and 900 rear to get better (stiffness) than the stock springs.

How do you remove the droop limiters?

The dampening adjustments are made with little gold knobs. When you turn them, you will feel 3-4 detents per revolution. We call those "clicks". So turn the knobs fully clock-wise (not so tight you hurt them),.. and then back them out 16 clicks in front and 13 out in the rear.

The springs that come with the shocks are already TWICE the stiffness of the stock springs.

Stock front springs are 206 lb/in. The Ohlins come with 400 lb for the Turbo and Carrera 4S,.... (350 for the 2wd cars)

The stock rears are something like 450 lb,.. and the Ohlins are 686 lb/in.

SO you're at 400/686 now with reduced travel over stock.

The manual suggest 5mm pre load. Has anyone done more than 5mm preload? How does it compare for bad roads? better control, but harsher ride?

Spring preload only changes the tension on the spring when the wheels are at full extension.

Otherwise it just changes ride height. If you crank in another 5 turns of pre-load,.. the car will just sit 5 turns higher at rest. (You can then lower the car back down 5 turns with the ride height adjuster.

All you're really doing when you add or remove spring preload is changing the distance from the top of the shock main body and the top-hat. (I.E. changing the amount of strut rod that is exposed). This changes the ratio of available bump travel to droop travel.

When I set mine up per the instructions,.. I had 1" or better of droop travel. And being that there is only about 60mm of total stroke as they come,.. that meant I had 1/2" or less of total bump travel. So even the tiniest bump would cause the front to bottom out.

@Duckstu How do you remove the droop limiters??

YOU and I don't.

You need to take them to a shock guy that rebuilds Ohlins, Bilstein etc.