Decided it’s time to R&R the shocks on my 2011 4S with PASM as I have 90K miles on the vehicle. I had a local independent write me an estimate for the work and was shocked to see it was almost $9K. I was thinking more on the line of $5-6K so I was pretty surprised with that figure. I checked on the parts pricing and to my surprise found that for the front and rear shocks, OEM Porsche pricing was around $6300.00 , ouch! I don’t see what those OEM shocks have that warrant such a huge price. I started looking for alternatives and found Blistein Damp Tronic performance units for $2100.00 all around so I ordered those instead for a savings of over $3,000 plus they are a better shock than the OEM units. Does anyone have any experience with DIY on non air shocks? I know there is a very good write up on the air shock replacement but I haven’t run across a PASM replacement DIY. Also, thought on replacing the front strut bearings? Porsche wants damn near $200.00 a pop for them.I haven’t tried to source them from anyone else as yet. Also, I was thinking of going with a good lowering spring set to drop the car about an inch, Bilstein recommended against it as they said it could allow the shock to bottom out and ruin the seals. Thoughts?

 

Front strut bearing (I had to look it up) comes with a packaged/complete strut, ie one example is Arnott, (the one I went with). While I more recently found out Arnott disables the PASM function I have not noticed any significant difference in damping left vs right as I have the original strut with replaced air bag on the other (right) side. The right sprung a leak and I did not have the capability to fill with N2 like I wished, (to follow Porsche instructions). I would trust Bilstein to know the travel specs of their strut. (No lowering springs means no lowering springs.) There was a guy on here that replaced his air system with coil springs. The process to clear the error(s) did take him some time to figure out. I forget exactly what he did to solve it, maybe the details weren't quite clear....

I do not know what impure air causes, but I did realize that water is adiabatic and high pressure of the system makes it less likely to freeze. It is more corrosive, as well as O2 that would be in air, so maybe eventually that's the problem with not filling with Nitrogen 5.0....

Full Arnott assemblies are available on Rock Auto from time to time at a fairly cheap price. I'm going to go with that next time.

 

I appreciate the reply but I think either I wasn’t clear or you misunderstood me. I do not have air suspension, I have the standard struts that have electronic selection for stiffness level ( which I believe is referred to as Porsche Active Suspension Managment PASM). The struts I’m buying are Bilsein Damptronic units for cars with PASM. They don’t come with strut bearings.

 

Wow! I thought all US models had air suspension for some reason. That's interesting to know and sorry for my confusion.

 

Yeah, no…air suspension is not standard on all US Panameras, whether that’s a good thing or not I would guess to be subjective. My 4S is not so equipped.