I bought the cheapest PSS9s on The Internet...

I started a related thread a few weeks back when I started in on this, but figured I'd shift things over to a new thread focused more on the full process of restoring the set of PSS9s I impulse bought off Facebook Marketplace a month or so ago for $650. I've had a squeak from the front right corner for quite some time that could be a control arm, but "felt like" it was the upper strut mount bushing... Squeaks for a few minutes when cold, then goes away. Regardless of whether or not this is an acceptably thorough diagnosis, it has been my excuse to plan my suspension upgrades. This past summer I threw some spacers on my wheels to get them flush with the fenders and, while it looks and drives great, it made the stock ride height look like a 2" lift. The already undesirable (to me) stock "front higher than the rear" stance was even more pronounced, and I couldn't help but go back to suspension planning... Gotta fix the squeak, right? Trouble was, I was sure my wife would kill me if I dropped $3k on something I didn't really need. So, I watched the forums, Craigslist, and Marketplace for something that could fly under the radar and not set off any alarms. I then proceeded to chronicle the shenanigans in great depth on a public forum. What an idiot. It took a few months of looking, but I found them -- and within an hour of posting, even! Despite the listing title, they are actually PSS9s, and according to the PO they have ~20k miles on them. Given the amount of corrosion and road gunk on them (they came from the mid-west) it was impossible to tell what condition the seals, shafts, springs, etc were... they just looked like ****, and I'm a sucker for a project that starts with a gamble... despite countless teachable moments I've acknowledged and promptly ignored. For $650, I figured even if they needed a full rebuild and all of the small parts replaced, I'd still be way under the price of a new set... hopefully I'm not muttering that sentence when I throw them in a dumpster. ======= Fast forward 3 days ======= They got here in one piece, and they looked just as bad in real life as they did in the ad, just higher resolution. On first inspection the springs will definitely need to be blasted and powder coated, and the collars are absolutely seized in place. Hopefully I can get the threads clean enough to remove them and avoid destroying the collars in the process. Rubber isolators on the rear assemblies were installed incorrectly, so they were squashed and cracked. I'm hoping that the darker dirt/grease buildup on the front assembly is from a torn CV boot and not from a leaking seal but the threads above the collar look much more dry so I am optimistic. Here are some pics after unboxing... Plenty of rust, corrosion, and mud, but after throwing all the chemicals available at the car wash at them and tearing them down, I found that the shafts were clean and there is no evidence of leakage. Without a reference point my compression/rebound test felt good, so it feels like I might have actually been dealt a decent hand. The midwest winter road grime gummed up the front strut bearings pretty well, and for $25 each, I'll probably just replace them rather than spending the time cleaning and re-packing the ones that came with the used ones. My car is a California car, so I bet the ones in my car are better, but I'd like to have the assemblies together and ready to go in before I put the car up on stands so I'm not going to rely on any of the existing OEM parts on my car. Got everything scrubbed down and bagged for later, and moved on to the seemingly never-ending PB Blaster baths. Definitely going to need to powder coat these springs... Ok, I'll pause there and follow up with some of the cleanup progress photos soon. Getting everything apart wasn't terribly difficult, just time consuming taking pictures and notes for future me and bagging things up in a way so I can remember the order in which they go back. I've never done this before, so I'm sure I'll make some mistakes along the way and appreciate any of the input you guys have to give! Hopefully there ends up being some valuable info in this thread for future masochists. Oh, and here's my '03 C4S that will be receiving the fruit of this labor when it's done!

cool project! looking forward to updates!

I would have sent them in to Bilstein for a proper rebuild.

Looking forward to watching the build!

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What's wrong with spending quality time in your garage? Good luck OP. Always happy to see interesting and different content here.

How much does rebuilding them cost vs just buying new ones?

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Rebuild @ manufacture costs over 50% Value of new ones.

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I had definitely considered it (and haven't completely ruled it out yet), but their services are internal-only, which means my efforts to get them presentable would not be wasted if I decided to send them in anyway. From what I've read/heard, they offer ultra-cheap rebuild options for original purchasers, but if you purchased them used, you get "full shop rate" so to speak. Going solely off their website ( Bilstein services details ) it would be $770 + shipping to rebuild all 4 which includes " seals, wipers, O-rings and oil" . PSS10s are even more expensive. Factoring in shipping, at that point with purchase price + rebuild I'd rather just buy something new and know that they have been taken care of their whole life. At this point, they all seem to have similar compression and rebound and no evidence of leaking seals or damaged shafts, so I am going to let it fly and see how much mileage I can get out of my "junkyard suspension". For reference, I just paid $1,100 to have the FOX 2.0s rebuilt (with some light upgrades) on my Raptor, so at the end of the day it could be worse.

Alright. Got the collars off after 6 days of 2x a day PB Blaster soaking. Got quite a few comments from my wife about how terrible it smelled in the garage. I told her she wouldn't have to smell it if we built me a shop........ moving on. I did not want to heat anything, so I went with the PB bath and repeated wire brushing until I could break the collars apart. I focused on trying to get the lower collar backed off the upper one first, and I ended up using a rubber mallet on the spanner wrench to get it backed off. Once they were apart it just took an hour or so to slowly coerce the collars off the dampers since the threads were still pretty full of corrosion. In retrospect, I probably could have brought them to the bench grinder wire wheel sooner and the process would have gone faster, I just didn't want to risk causing unnecessary cosmetic damage to the anodized pieces. I ended up trading the potential wire wheel damage for some slipped spanner wrench damage... oh well. Here's a shot of the dampers with the collars off and the shafts taped up to prevent damage while cleaning. My approach was to hit the threads with the bench grinder wire wheel first to make sure I could get them clean enough that the collars would go back on without friction. To avoid unexpectedly grinding anything, I replaced the grinding wheel that was on my bench grinder with the aluminum polishing cutting wheel that I expected to use for the final cleanup. I highly recommend this step... when you are super focused on one side of the grinder and the angle of the work, it's really easy to lose track of the rest of the work. I definitely mistakenly polished the end of the shaft once or twice and let out a huge "WHEW" that otherwise would have been much louder and less family friendly. Since the wire wheel worked so well on the threads, I moved on to some inconspicuous parts of the body to see how harsh the wire wheel would be on the non-threaded parts of the damper bodies. Surprisingly, it worked really well and the nice thing about the grinder-mounted wire wheel is that I could control the direction of the abrasion to keep it consistent with the horizontal lines on the housings so at the end of the process it didn't show any signs at all of having been hit with some pretty harsh abrasives. The bench wheel got 90% of the bodies, and the hard-to-reach places were easy to catch with a small wire cup on a power drill. Here's the first pass: I did my best to save the stickers, but my level of care decreased with every little nick and I ended up full honey badger by the end of it and just wanted to be done with the process. Not sure yet if I should just remove them entirely and rely on the stamped part numbers (that you can now read again!) and some paperwork showing the part numbers. Thoughts? Keep them on for posterity, or peel them off and make the whole unit "pretty"? Here's a nice before and after of the first round of cleanup: The "wire wheel only" process left the housings *much* cleaner, but still needing some polishing to meet my expectations for being clean enough to put on a car that happens to be really well-sorted. This may be a "junkyard suspension", but I don't want anyone to know. Round 2 of this process was back to the bench grinder for some buffing and polishing. I used a Harbor Freight buffing wheel and a pass on each damper with brown rouge followed by white rouge, and a good scrub-down with a microfiber cloth at the end. I probably could have spent a lot more time on the buffing/polishing process, but all of my garage time is after the family goes to sleep, and I ran out of steam. After all of the polishing and cleanup, the final product looks like this: I'm pretty satisfied with how these came out. It's a pretty amazing difference with a few hours and $10 in Harbor Freight consumables. One thing I noticed in this process is that there's a small tack weld on the end of the "fin" on the front dampers that has broken. I don't think there's any structural function to that weld other than keeping the fin from getting mangled since it is thin gauge metal and I don't want to go anywhere near the dampers with a welder, so I'm going to leave it alone and hope that there's no real functional need for that tack weld. Next, we'll tackle these nasty springs. Total investment to date... $660.

Looks 100% better so far.

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I think that would have defeated the purpose of buying these at a good price.

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Great work. I love seeing this kind of thread!

Great work. I can�t wait to see the finished result, and how you like them on the car.

Got the springs back from powder coating, and they look absolutely brand new. Really great work from Pristine Powder Coating in Denver, and they turned them around quickly even around the holidays. $220 out the door media blasted and coated with Cardinal BL-05 , which was the closest to the stock Bilstein color that they had on the color wall. Check out the before and after... All the major components are all cleaned up and ready for re-assembly, but I've got a few more things to address before I can put it all together... The rubber bushings on the top mounts that came with the used set were shot, and I'm confident the ones that are on the car are also in need of replacing, so I decided to go the spherical monoball cartridge route on the front and back. I figured upgrading these parts now would be valuable regardless of if these dampers end up working out. Ordered 2 pair from Elephant Racing for just about what I spent on the coil overs themselves. The sway bar links that came with the kit were in just as bad condition as the rest of the components, and rather than spend the time cleaning those up and messing with unknown rubber health in the rod ends, I ordered a set of Tarett drop links. I also ordered some small OEM parts that will need to be delivered before I can start re-assembling. Strut mount bearings, rubber isolators, nylock nuts for the front. Everything from here on out will be primarily upgrades to the units that I am justifying with the low entry cost. When I re-assemble the units with the OEM replacement parts, I'll list out the part numbers and costs so we can get a true total of the investment in restoring them and the cost of upgrades. As of this step, I'm sitting at $880 into the project.

Springs look good, that was a quick turn around.

I hope you include your install process as well. I also have an 03 C4S and am thinking PSS9s or PSS10s, which ever I can find at a good deal. This has been fun to watch so far. Good luck.

Looking good.. Any idea if ride height can be increased over stock with those dampers? I'm looking for options for my C4. Usually you can raise the springs enough, but the dampers "top out" if not designed for that much travel.

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I'll definitely include the install and post-install thoughts in this thread. Hopefully not too far off! If you are looking for a great install thread, check out Docwyte's thread over on the turbo forum: Part I: Rear , Part II: Front . He did a great job of detailing the process, which would be the same as the C4S. The ride height adjustment window for these is super narrow. In fact, the instructions call for a very specific range of collar setting, and it is only a 10mm window for the fronts and 5mm window for the rears -- basically for allowing room for corner balancing. In my research I found that these are really tuned for performance improvements and are not the best option for stance tuning (slamming or raising). However, you have piqued my interest with your "raising" scenario. What is your use case?

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Something like this.... Wow - that was about 6 years ago already. Unfortunately, it is not my car. The owner was kind enough to let me drive it for a full season and a little of a second.

Made some progress on the rubber isolator for the top of the rear strut assembly that I was trying to chase down in the other thread . For the lazy, here's the pic of where the isolator was incorrectly installed in when I received the coil overs, and it was squashed, dry rotted, and cracked. Also, the PSS10 diagram (best I could find) referencing the isolator in question and where it is *supposed* to go... After I found that diagram, Bilstein sent me a PSS9 diagram that shows that the PSS9s didn't use that OEM isolator (at least it's not included in their diagram). Something tells me they added that to the PSS10s for a reason, so I think I'm going to come up with something to act as an isolator between the strut mount and the spring plate rather than just leave it out entirely and have metal to metal contact (i.e. - squeaks). After an inordinate amount of time searching, I found a thread that has a great picture of the OEM isolator I was looking for so I had some hope... but couldn't find it anywhere. Even the Porsche exploded parts diagram of the rear strut doesn't show an isolator / compensator plate. The closest OEM part I could find was for the front ( Part #996-343-511-00 ), and at $5 a pop, I ordered two in the hopes that I could make them work. Here you can see the new one next to the old squashed one. They are clearly different sizes, but I'm thinking a nice sharp razor blade might solve my problem... Luckily, the O.D. of the new rubber plate is nearly identical to the spring plate, so I used the spring plate itself to trace the I.D. (see below) and got out a nice sharp pair of scissors and cut out enough material from the inside of the plate to clear the rubber "splines" on the bottom of the rear strut mount. After trimming, the new ones look nice and clean. Slightly thinner, but fit the diameter of the spring mount perfectly. Nice. Now I'll have a little more peace of mind that I might avoid some potential squeaking and I won't have any "extra parts" at the end. Shipping doubled the price of the plates, so tack $20 on to the total. $900 to date.

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Oh, man - what a cool project. So I have little to no experience with rally cars, but wouldn't overall travel be a big part of building a performant race car like that? Simply getting the ride height up there would let you clear bigger rubber and road debris, but if you're sucking up terrain, doesn't the strut travel and rebound have more effect on your overall performance than height? Maybe that is getting into baja territory rather than safari... At that point I don't know how much else can really be done without going wider to get longer arms to support more vertical travel, but then you have the problem of CV angles at full droop and all that. I used to have a 955 that I had grand plans of turning into a real off-road truck, but decided to just get a Gen 1 Raptor and flog it as-is. This is what I always wanted to do to it ... Great project! Good luck!

A little more travel and a little increase in right height is all I'm looking for. Probably less than in inch. It should still be used daily on the road. Having adjustable right height that goes above stock is important. I'll rely on various tire options as well. That Cayenne is cool.

Alright! Finally back with an update. I was posting fast and furious over the holidays, then the real world caught up with me and I had to "work" and stuff. Anyway, stole some time in the shop this weekend and got it all done. Lots to report. After I made the custom rubber isolator above, I started working through the modifications to the strut mounts to handle the Elephant Racing monoball bearing cartridges to replace the inevitably failing rubber bushings. Rather than spend too much on a replacement stock rubber bushing mount or an astronomical amount on camber plates that I won't use (this is not a track car), I decided to modify the top plates I have with the ER sphericals. The install was not difficult, but it took a bit to get my head around exactly what I needed to do. The hole saws required for the front and rear are different sizes (and obscure 1/16th inch sizes) so I asked Chuck at ER if the tolerances were important or if it's just a guide to remove enough material. He confirmed that the latter, so I used the 1/8th inch increments that I had in my toolbox. The instructions called for the bearing nuts to seat against bare metal, and the rubber on the fronts were so thick that I decided to wire wheel it down to the metal and paint it. The rears needed some paint coverage in the bore, but nothing more than that. ...and a finished picture of the spherical installed in the shock mount (chronologically out of order). The paint chipped because the bearing is metal to metal... I touched it up before installing to prevent rust. I should also mention that I replaced the strut bearings because the ones I got with the assembly were trashed, and with 100k miles on the take-offs, I didn't want to chance it. $60 after shipping for both. This project spawned in part as a "while I'm in there" for replacing the torn front CV boots, so part of the misery of this project was taking apart and rebuilding the joints. We'll get back to that later. So this ended up being 2 half-days in the shop punctuated by 5-year-old birthday parties. Nothing is ever easy anymore. I borrowed my generous neighbor's QuickJack for the project (he's also a member here), which turned out to be an amazing time saving at the end when I had to do a couple of unexpected ups and downs. I followed a couple of nicely written DIY threads to get all of this done. To recap, I needed to remove the caliper, the outer axle nut, and inner bolts. I did not have to remove the tie rod like some of the resources on the web suggest. Once the stock struts were removed, I had enough knuckle play that I could work the axle shaft out without any other removals. The impact with a big a$$ 60gal compressor took care of the 340lb/ft of torque on that axle nut. I highly recommend a hefty air tool to get that sucker off. Otherwise, you're going to need a 4 foot breaker bar and a buddy that does cross-fit -- which you'll still need to get it back on. Hang your calipers out of the way being careful not to crimp or kink the hard line. Use a sharpie (metallic silver helps on a black car) to mark the position of the upper bolts so you get your camber set back to where it was when you re-install. Tape the heck out of the fender to keep from damaging your paint. You'll think "I'll be fine"... you won't. A bunch of painters tape is worth the peace of mind. There are a couple of tricks to getting the spring out without a compressor, and once you've removed the pinch bolt and the perch bolt it's fairly easy to get it swung outside the fender for removal. Having a friend is very helpful here... I used a BFH to pound the damper out of the knuckle and it was great to have someone holding the assembly away from the car while I beat the snot out of it. I found my suspension squeak. As I expected, the rubber bushing for the passenger side strut mount was completely rotten. So bad that I could see the floor almost all the way around it, and when I pushed on it with my thumb the bearing dropped to the floor. I'm very happy that I'll be fixing that! On to the CV joints... They were pretty bad. There is plenty of documentation out there on this, and I primarily relied on some of the YouTube videos on the subject because the process is quite intricate. The first video I watched had the bearing slide off the end of the shaft no problem... Not the case for me. I needed a puller to get the center of the bearing off the shaft, and I needed a brass drift to get it back on after re-assembling the joint on the bench. A moment of explicit language came when I was pinching on the new clamp on the new boot and it snapped off. That ended my evening until NAPA opened in the morning. Once that was on there, good as new and ready to re-install. Note that there are 2 torque specs for the inner bolts... 33lb/ft and 60lb/ft for different size bolts. The M6 that I had was 33 lb/ft which I realized after I had the torque wrench to 60lb/ft from another DIY thread and I was really nervous about why my wrench wasn't "clicking". I got very lucky I didn't cause any damage. Make sure you triple check that torque setting before you go after it. To avoid spinning the axle while torquing, I had a friend stand on the brake while I was torquing each bolt down. OK! Now that the CVs were installed, I could move on to installing the finished coilovers. When you install the fronts, I used anti-seize for lube getting it in and to avoid needing the amount of firepower to remove it that I needed on the stocks. It took some elbow grease to get it seated. Pardon the grease smudges on this "after" photo. I got trigger happy and went to install it before I cleaned up the knuckle bore and that is all the schmutz that was jettisoned from the torn CV boot. I ended up cleaning it up and installing it before I thought to take another picture. Oops... that was the whole point of this thread. In this picture of the rears, the perches are set to the value I got back from Bilstein in the other thread... that value was WRONG! The PSS10 value ended up being correct (205-210mm eye to collar face). I set the front and the rear to be right in the middle of the recommended spec (85mm front, 207.5mm rear) so the shop that does the alignment and corner balance would have some room to move in either direction. I also did some research on stiffness settings and went with 4 in the rear and 3 in the front as a starting point. Installed, they look pretty clean! The sparkly new Tarett sway bar links don't hurt, either. I torqued those down just enough to keep them from clunking between home and the alignment shop. I'll have them torque them to ~80lb/ft with the car on the ground. I neglected to take pictures of the rear when installed. By that point in the process I was more interested in being done than documenting the process. The rears were pretty easy - honestly, the hardest part was wedging myself in the back seat to remove the carpet, subwoofer, and bracketry. I used a floor jack to support the assembly as I pried it out of the control arm. After a quick down/up/down to re-adjust the rear collars to the PSS10 heights, I'm very happy with the stance of the car. It's a little low in the front, but that will be fixable at corner balancing time. I ended up with 25" front and 25.5" rear. I'd like to be at 2-fingers gap (roughly 25.5") front and rear. I'll take better pictures during the day once the ride height is adjusted. I'll have more driving impressions after the alignment is done, but after a spirited drive around town, I can safely say this is a huge improvement over stock. The ride is firm but not jarring, and it does a great job of soaking up imperfections in the road. The steering is extremely responsive -- it may be partly placebo, but it feels more precise than before. No clunks, squeaks, or rattles at this point, but only time will tell on that front. Additional costs here were... $60 for shock bearing plates ( 996-343-501-00-M10) $5 for new nylock nuts and washers that will fit inside the sphericals (the stock concave washer plates are too big) Total without my performance modifications: $965 $313 for the front monoball cartridges $315 for the rear monoball cartridges Total with sphericals: $1593 With the huge assumption that these last for any reasonable amount of time, I am pretty happy to have gotten the core upgrade done for under $1k. That also allowed me to spend a little extra while fixing a preexisting condition to end up with a solid street setup that would be easy to configure for track days if I ever get the green light to do so. Hopefully this was helpful info for others looking to refurbish a set of these. It really wasn't terribly difficult, just dirty and time consuming. I enjoyed it, but I think once is enough... I'll buy new next time

Nice find! I just bought a set of KW v3's off marketplace for the same price! Mine look to be about in the same condition yours were. I think I am going to let KW rebuild them though. Great work!