What spring you run wont change the life of the damper.

Factory dampers are good for about 30k under normal driving conditions and will start to loose there ability to control even the stock spring around that mileage interval.

Regardless of what car you have the dampers are meant to wear out.
It does not cost Porsche anymore than it costs VW to make a damper.
The same basic technology goes into stock shocks.


Hope thats a little insight on your question.

 

That helps a lot, thanks - although on prior sports cars, I have installed aftermarket springs and it reduced the life of the shock absorbers significantly relative to those who stayed on stock springs, this is with just a minor 0.75 to 1" drop (e.g. from 60 mile life to 30 mile life).

I presume it had a lot to do with the springs rates being too aggressive, and not being properly matched to the dampening power of the stock shock, resulting in a minor under-dampening situation.

So to rephrease my question and to be a little more technical does anyone know between H&R or Eibach, which is better spring-rate matched to the stock shocks?

Are both springs linear? Or are they progressive?

(Thanks guys! Sorry if this is a repost as I am a complete newbie to p-car modifications)

 

This is interesting because the Porsche shops around me will not swap out springs on PASM cars because of the belief that lowering the car without changing the dampers (which is not possible with stock PASM shocks) will cause issues. The reason I was given by Porsche as well as 3 shops in my area was that PASM is a different animal altogether from standard shocks. They were designed and programmed specifically to the spring and visa versa. To just take those electronic dampers and lower the car is not how PASM was designed.

I will also say there have been several postings here and on other Porsche forums of owners that bought lowering springs and ended up blowing out their PASM shocks. Maybe it all just depends on your streets, how you drive, etc?

Just sharing what I've been told and read...

 

In terms of ride quality, is it true that simply swapping out the springs will result in a mismatch between the original shocks and aftermarket springs?

This is the primary reason I haven't lowered my vehicle, as I've been told that ride quality will definitely deteriorate. Unless I go with a full coil-over setup.

 

30k miles? So how long will Damptronics last?