I wanted to post a note about these struts. They are the yellow sport struts with the rebound damper adjustment at the top. Purchased these last month when they were on sale for 20% off. Just got them a couple of weeks ago and I just finished installing them over the weekend.
The damper adjuster at the top increases the rear shock height by about 10mm ish over the stock unit. It's enough that it causes interference with the plastic trim piece that covers the strut tower inside the vehicle. You can snap the piece down in place but the adjuster rod is jammed up against the plastic quite hard. Sent
Koni
an email about this and they basically said drill a hole.
So if anyone decides to opt for these you'll either need to drill a hole and make it look nice with some kind of
cap
/grommet or just see what happens without modification.
If I was worried about the aesthetics, I’d probably make a hole in the trim large enough for an adjusting knob to fit and then leave a knob installed on both rear struts.
What I planned on doing was similar. I'm going to drill a hole that's large enough for everything to fit through but I'm going to keep it to standard sizing. Then I'll install a rubber grommet around the hole and paint the top of the adjuster black. It should turn out well. I'll post a picture
next
week when I'm done.
Figured I'd give an update on the strut performance now that I have a few hundred miles and a track day on them. Even though the stock struts I took off weren't leaking, they had 90k miles on them so it's not really a fair comparison and take this for what it's worth. On the street the car handles all pavement irregularities much better and produce a much nicer ride now. Easiest description is everything is reduced in magnitude quite a bit.
On the track it's the same thing. The track I go to has certain lines I want to take but there are dips or small irregularities that caused the old struts to lose composure at high speeds. I was able to take those lines now without issues. There is also small hill on the track that turns into a jump if you go fast enough. On the old struts if you were going too fast and the suspension unloaded then it was a bit scary once it came back down and you immediately had to start braking. The new struts handled it drastically better and felt much more composed. It allowed me to hit that hill easily going 6 to 8mph faster than last time.
Rstrohkirch, I was considering these as a replacement for my existing stock dampers (Non
PASM
,
987.2 cayman S
). I lowered the car with H&
R springs
and the handling went completely bad. I guess its a massive mismatch between the springs and the OE dampers. Low speed street ride is better than OE, but pick up the speed orate it to the track and its very apparent, that the car would bounce about a bit on high speed turns. 80% of my driving is street and 20 % track, hence hoping for comfort (NVH ) on roads and as good or better composure on track. All in combination with the H&R lowered springs.
My question to you is, now that you have had the dampers on for a while, would you suggest the same for my requirement? Also how effective (sensitive) are the various settings for rebound on the top of the strut?
Thank you
It's hard for me to say because I don't have lowering springs. I wasn't sure how long I was going to keep the car so I didn't want to lower it and have it affect my resale value. I can tell you that Koni says the shocks are acceptable for use with up to 1.2" drop springs. You will also need to drill a hole in your back plastic strut covers because of the rebound adjuster fouling the plastic. On the flip side, after another track day and more street miles I still believe these were a good purchase to replace the stock dampers. The car just feels better everywhere. In regards to rebound adjustment sensitivity, the strut offers 2 full turns of adjustment. They suggest .5T for street and 1T for sports. You can absolutely tell a difference between .5T and my track setting of 1.25T. The last track day I left and forgot to adjust them back and it took me about 5 miles to realize I didn't.
So , to summarise, on track performance, the car felt better than when on its OE struts? And the NVH comfort on road, better than OE strut (with th rebound adjustments)?
Correct, the car feels better everywhere. If you live in a place with marginal road quality then you would especially appreciate the upgrade to some kind of quality aftermarket damper. The stock dampers aren't amazing in this vehicle.
Thank you so much for the replies.
After a whole lot researching and debating, my choices have narrowed down to, either
Koni
struts or
BC Racing coilovers
.
Rstrohkirch, I‘m also looking into
Koni
’s as an option so thanks for your review. Do you have a picture of the hole you made in the rear plastic covers? Also did they come with the bumpstops/bellows or did you have to re-use your original ones? Thanks again…
