Pics & Review of My Bilstein PSS10 Lowered Red Turbo by cannga

3 minute(s) of a 612 minute read

5-1-2013

Thanks and I am glad you found the thread useful. The process is actually very simple: the springs/coilovers are the heart and soul of a sports car, first take care of that, then nearly everything else follows. The reason is that sloppy handling is primarily a result of excessive weight transfer: not only side to side, but also front to back with acceleration (squatting), and back to front with braking (diving). These extra motions are what caused "uncertainty" in the subjective feel, and objective handling dynamics, of a car. With stiffer springs, you will lose some ride comfort, but in return the car will lean a lot less in curves, its steering will be tighter (the lazy steering of the Turbo actually was what bothered me the most about stock Turbo), and as a bonus, if you use Bilstein Damptronic, you also correct the flaw of PASM 1st generation (IMHO PASM gen 1 goes from one extreme to the other, with nothing in between: very soft in Normal mode, completely jittery and un-useable in Sport mode.). Bilstein Damptronic PASM is much better regulated and is how the car should have been released in the first place; its firm setting is very much useable, its normal setting quite perfect, at least for the streets of Los Angeles.

A few months after buying my Turbo, I nearly traded the Turbo for the GT3. Turbo was fast, but something about the handling had started to bother me big time once the power novelty wore off. A subsequent test drive in the GT2 then confirmed my fear and broke my heart . After actually driving Turbo vs. GT2 back to back, I could not believe how the 2 cars felt so completely different from each other. While the Turbo is extremely fast in straightline, its handling is so soft that it feels soulless and boring next to its more race-oriented 911 siblings, GT2 and GT3. Admittedly I was comparing apple to orange, but to me, the Turbo's stock suspension had gone too far in the soft direction. Way too far.

The Bilstein Damptronic coilover saved me a lot of $$$ and offered a perfect compromise. I feel now I have the best of both worlds: a car that is midway between the stock Turbo and a GT3 in handling, so very fast and tight, and yet still comfortable enough for me to drive 10,000 miles/year in the not so perfect streets of Los Angeles. For what it does - a transformation of the car's dynamics, to think that it cost a mere 2500, half that of my exhaust (!), is quite mind boggling. Once the suspension is modded, the Turbo to me is finally a world- class daily driver, and one without peer. All is well again and I am such a happy camper because of that .