[Rootus]

Anyone ever try them? I've heard rumors that the struts they use are manufactured by Bilstein. The price is quite competitive (a quick search found them for $1320). The damping is not adjustable ... but I do not consider that a negative.

[Splash]

Yep I had them.

450/400 springs, ok valving (but not great), non-adjustable.

They are 2" shorter than stock struts, so they are made for the more severe lowering jobs, though I did run them at only 1" drop.

Not much droop at that height, so not all that good for Auto-X, but great for a lowered street car.

[sportek1]

Originally Posted by Splash

Yep I had them.

450/400 springs, ok valving (but not great), non-adjustable.

They are 2" shorter than stock struts, so they are made for the more severe lowering jobs, though I did run them at only 1" drop.

Not much droop at that height, so not all that good for Auto-X, but great for a lowered street car.

what do you mean with not great valving? What do you consider as great valving?

[stretch]

2" shorter than stock on 450# springs sounds about right. That'd put you at a ~14" hub-to-fender height, I think, if you just barely pretensioned the spring (meaning perfect droop travel). That's what most people want. If indeed they are Bilsteins, then I'm intrigued. (I agree on adjustability being over-rated.)

[sportek1]

I know that the H&R struts / inserts are made by Bilstein (you can see Bilstein printed on the parts), but i am not sure if the valving is the same as the PSS.

[RyanLee]

subscribed. Anyone has it?

[Rootus]

It is hard to find people who have experience with them, especially on an STI. I have had good experiences in the past with H&R products on other cars. I'd definitely like to hear more about the valving and why Splash considers it "not great." I'd have hoped that with non-adjustable damping H&R would have gotten Bilstein to put them together a setup that matched the spring rates well.

[RyanLee]

http://www.tirerack.com/suspension/s...459&perfCode=S

[lackskill]

They are just up the road from me. IIRC the girl with the pink rims (The one in scoobysport) is working for them again and running their CO's. I see her around town once in a while.

[RyanLee]

will this fit with RCE camber plates? and rear group-n tophats?

[Splash]

They fit just fine on my PDE plates and Group-N rears.

Also, stretch and I will argue 'till we're blue in the face on the whole droop issue, but a distinct lack of rear droop plus the insane amount of lowering needed for them to be happy were the main reasons I had for getting rid of them. Like I said, good for a lowered street car.

They liked to be 1.5" lower or more as that provided the best balance of travel options relative to their fully extended length. I did not want to run that low and had the perches rather high on the body. This results in having the helpers almost fully compressed, running out of shaft extension at any level of droop. For the limited lowering I wanted, they are just too short.

The droop issue meant that, even with 450lb fronts springs and a 27mm front bar, the rear wheel would lift and spin in tight corners. There just isn't enough extension available to allow the inside rear to stay on the ground. Keep in mind though, this is during autocross conditions. For the street, they're fine.

[Rootus]

Originally Posted by Splash

The droop issue meant that, even with 450lb fronts springs and a 27mm front bar, the rear wheel would lift and spin in tight corners. There just isn't enough extension available to allow the inside rear to stay on the ground. Keep in mind though, this is during autocross conditions. For the street, they're fine.

What is the practical difference between lifting the wheel off the ground and simply unloading it to ~0 lbs/in but still touching asphalt? I've spun the right rear on a road course, and I'm 99.9% sure I didn't lift it off the ground. How would it have been worse if I had managed to get it completely airborne?

All serious questions that I'd like good answers for, since I'm trying to make a suspension decision soon.

I'm waffling on what I want to do about these clunking STI struts. I'm leaning towards waiting on the RB320 Bilstein setup or just getting Ohlins fixed perch, since I'm pleased with the spring rates (and associated street manners) of my pinks, and with the big whiteline bars I do not feel like I'm leaving much on the table on the road course. The requirement with the H&R's to lower 1.0+ inches is a deal killer for me.

[stretch]

Originally Posted by Rootus

What is the practical difference between lifting the wheel off the ground and simply unloading it to ~0 lbs/in but still touching asphalt? I've spun the right rear on a road course, and I'm 99.9% sure I didn't lift it off the ground. How would it have been worse if I had managed to get it completely airborne?

This is where Splash and I disagree: I say there is no difference. The spring unloads completely because there is no weight on the corner, and whether or not there's weight on that corner has nothing to do with droop travel. You only want to avoid overly pretensioning your springs so that the tire unloads smoothly. However, even a mild pretensioning isn't bad because your sway bar transmits some load to that side, always putting tension on that spring in corners.

Case in point: I have loads of suspension travel in the back of my car. I run hydrolic Koni shocks- they have no gas pressure that would cause the shock to expand without a spring. My springs, 8" long 250lb/in, completely decompress about 1.5 inches prior to the strut fully extending. Thus, I have 1.5 inches of droop beyond where I could possibly have a use for. Splash advocates this, if I understand his argument- he likes droop well beyond where the spring unloads. I have that even though I don't want it. Nonetheless, I still lift a rear wheel very easily. Why? Because it's a weight transfer issue, and my car is capable of transferring 100% of its weight laterally. To solve this, I'd need to lower the car's center of gravity or lower my spring rate (or sway bar rate) in the rear, where the latter would cause steady state understeer.

[Splash]

Sure, if you got a micrometer out, you could say that 0lb load but still touching is the same as airborne. Then again, if you are THAT precise, why are we discussing consumer grade hardware on a car that likely still has a lot of it's OEM rubber bushings in it?

I consider any sufficient lightness of the inside rear wheel to allow it to spin as being sufficiently unweighted for me to be concerned about it. The amount of air under it is irrelevant.

Point was, I got mine to lift a LOT, as in, frequently. This made the inside rear spin, sometimes wildly, with a loud WHAM! when it came back down. Knowing this was a diff-buster made it a deal killer as well as I cannot change out my rear diff. I could not seem to get a girder from the Golden Gate Bridge to fit in there as the front bar either, so the H&R's had to go.

But again, I never ran into issues with this on the street. YMMV.

Personally, I would not run these unless I wanted to satisfy their height requirements to keep them in their happy spot.

[Rootus]

How does droop travel (or suspension travel in general) have any effect on unloading the wheel, though? Shouldn't that be a matter of weight transfer? If it is going to unload 750 pounds off of a particular wheel, it seems like it would do it whether or not it took 1 inch, or 10 inches.

Or something like that.