H&R Springs

I wanted to get peoples thoughts on swapping out the factory springs on theCayman. I have used H&R Springs in the past for my VW and Audi and they worked great. Has anyone had any past experience with Porsche and aftermarket springs? Do I need to replace the factory shocks or are they good enough to support the lowering? If not any other better brands out there than H&R that I might want to look at?H&R Specs are 1.4 Front 1.2 Rear Part # 54020 shown on the H&R website Regards,

Generally, with H&R springs, it is not necessary to swap the shocks, but I'd recommend waiting a little bit until few companies do actual test & tune to figure the proper spring rates. For example Cargraphics has pretty nice lowering springs for the Boxster and 997 with and without PASM , but it took them couple months to try different settings before settling onspecific rates. Waiting couple of month or until March/April time frame would be my recommendation.

Thanks for the info FT, I can't wait to start loading up the garage with stuff for the Cayman but you have a very good point. I guess I better hold off a bit until I learn a little bit more about it. Regards,

H&R springs work very well, I had great ride quality with them on my M Coupe, and am considering having them installed on my Cayman S at the dealer before I even take delivery. They'll definately be on there before this summer is over. It's probably best to wait a while though, until they get some feedback on the spring rates as FT suggests.

Would you change the springs on a Ferrari F430? If you were going to track it you would. The same may apply to the Cayman . Decide where you will be driving the car, then drive it there for at least oncebefore changing a setup that Walter Rohrl approved - less the LSD - of course.

LizardKing, Will please take before and after pictures with the H&R springs. It would be great to see the differance along with a review. Thanks, Ken

LK, I has been my experience that most, if not all Porsche dealers will not install aftermarket componants on their new cars... only Porsche factory componants... that being said, if they come out with a ROW lowering kit like in the past, they would install that. There was a good answer to this question yesterday by Pete Stout of Excellence Magazine in the Cayman Chat forum. In case you missed it, I'm pasting it in below. brad ----------------------------------- Lowering Porsches remains a tough subject. For those that care about ride-height-related aesthetics, the ugly truth is that most Porsches don't handle as well when they are lowered -- at least in most road-use situations. Even the factory's own GT3 exhibited some of the downsides to lowering a 996 beyond the suspension geometry parameters it was designed with. It hunts and weaves along the road, and the same things that affect street GT3s were a battle with all 996 race cars until the 996 GT3 RS street car homologated suspension pieces that allowed Porsche Motorsport to address the pick-up point problems in the earlier, 1999-2003 race cars for its 2004 GT3 RSR. I have been researching the lowering methods available to me for our Boxster and am down to H&Rs with Bilstein Sports or RoW M030. It's a tough call for various reasons (H&Rs look better, but throw away all the development time Weissach put into M030). And then there are a lot of high-dollar options. That said, I can't see putting coil-overs in my own street car. I hear lots of good things about PSS-9s and have experienced firsthand the excellent characteristics of JRZ, SRP, and other remote-reservoir shocks but feel their $3,000-5,000 buy-in pricing is a bit too far gone for (my own) street cars.

Yup, actually, I would lower an F430, if for some weird reason it looked as if it were perched too high (a high-horse, get it!?). The F430 looks as if it were already lowered, and does not need to be modified. I have a friend who disagrees with that. He had a new F360 Modena (now demolished) and he modified it. He put a Tubi system on it, at the dealer, and that was definitely an improvement over what the Ferrari engineers had come up with, by all accounts. Of course this was due to total disregard for any sound regulations. The most amazing sound it was (no boxer engine can ever sound as awe inspiring as as that). Truly, some Caymans do look lofty in photographs. Most notably the one featured in the latest Christophorus. The one sitting on my dealers floor too, which has PASM , looks like a high horse. Even more strange, it looks to be a bit higher the the Boxster S parked next to it. If mine looks too high for my taste, down it'll go. When I lowered my M Coupe, It got new H&R coil-overs in front, H &R shocks in rear, as well as perch relocation, cross balancing, new camber plates, and some killer 3-piece RD Sports. It was a definite improvement, if you do it right. Watch the posative camber. The guy who bought it after me tracked me down on the web, and thanked me for setting it up and taking such good care of it.

Hi FT, How about Cargraphics lowering springs for Cayman with pasm ? Any updates? http://www.gmgracing.com/porsche_suspension.shtml

H&R's well established and has been OE on some Porsche models. I would not be afraid of installing them and getting a good alignment.

Just had my H&R springs installed today by the dealer. They look and feel fantastic. So far no problems with PASM , though it's only been one day.

Oaktown OG, How much was the installation by the dealer (if you don't mind) , and what are your new specs. Hopefully I'll receive my cs in august the first week and I' will have the H&R's instelled by my dealer as well. Have fun with your new set up. ps. could you post some pic. if possible. Best, as

PASM adjusting the shocks wont be phased by a slight drop in ride height from the H&Rs. Unlike cheaper and older shock designs the Porsche stuff (and BIlstein , Konis etc's higher end stuff) wont destroy itself because the cars riding a few mm lower than normal. Shocks are designed to work over a wide range and unless you slam the thing your fine.

kmaness, that flies in the face of what Porsche engineers have said and the way in which PASM works. Granted there may be some PASM compatible springs out there, but I don't think you can make as sweeping of a generalization as your statement seems to be without some evidence to back it up.

997 GT3 and its adjustable ride height is proof enough that PASM can work just fine. If the Cayman was adversely effected by ride height it would face issues corning hard or when going over bumps at high rates of speed both of which cause adjustments in ride height to varying degrees. Suspension is designed to work over a range of heights, both higher and lower than the vehicle sits at rest or cruise. Im confident, as is H&R, that these springs wont cause a deterioration in handling characteristics of the Cayman platform. Now if you go messing with coil over shocks then sure, unless not set up correctly it can cause problems. But PASM would have to be disabled.

I will add that a very well known P-caralignment guru (West End Alignment, Gardena) claims its not a problem to align correctly with that small drop and recommends factory specs.

The PASM system might firm up the ride a bit because it is setup for stock springs and expects certain things to happen during lane changes, track driving, accelerating, braking etc. Now with the H&Rs reducing squat and dive and firming up the ride (assuming it does, just bare with me here) the PASM has encountered new readings under the same conditions and will potentially make a different decision on what to do with the shock. I do see a market for tweaked PASM settings matched to a specific spring. I think it would be overkill unless changing the spring rate and height significantly however.

Installation wasn't too bad. Ended up costing me $700 for installation and around $450 for parts. The dealership I go to uses H&R's all the time and they assured me it won't affectthe PASM setup. The good thing about having the dealer do the work is that it is covered under warranty. At least that is the case at my dealership. So if anything goes wrong with my Cayman due to the spring setup they will fix it for free. Now I just need to decide on some wheels...

Kmaness, Your first response about the GT3 and PASM proved my point, go read the thread where the Porsche engineer says that the new GT3 has different springs because of PASM (linear vs. progressive). That is my point exactly, that if Porsche had to change the springs to support a lower ride on the GT3 and still work with PASM , then aftermarket companies should be following Porsche 's example. The question of course is how much lowering has what effect and I think that's the big unknown right now.

Im not talking about better handling, I should clear that up. What Im saying is that the PASM system wont fail or break because you lowered the car. No dealer would take that risk and offer the installation service. Will H&Rs improve handling? That remains to be seen and would require some track testing. It will lower the center of gravity obviously and therefore feel a lot more fun to drive but as for reducing lap times thats an unknown. Porsche engineers did not make the Cayman setup the absolute best possible. There are compromises they had to consider including road surfaces, angles of entries and exits not to mention minimum height requirements the DOT sets. Edited by - kmaness on 07/14/2006 12:05:36 PM

PASM has an operational range, if it finds itself outside its operational range it will throw up an error and in some situations shut itself down. If the springs you install take PASM outside its operational range then yes those springs will cause PASM to fail, this has already happened on some 997's and possibly on one Cayman so far. Porsche also adjusted the PASM programming for the GT3, likely adjusting the range over which is operates or the values it sees. I don't know if those updated PASM settings can be applied to other cars or not, but that would be interesting to know and would be interesting to know if it 'fixes' the 997's that have had problems with PASM after being lowered with H&R or other springs.

I'm having the H&Rs installed early next week and then going to Thunderhill Raceway (including a 700 mile drive to and from the track) so I should have some seat of the pants feedback on this setup. K-man S, do you have some links to reports of 997 issues with these springs?

sleepless I don't, I was referring to the problems another user mentioned that were discussed on ********. As I said above, I'm sure it all depends on whether or not you exceed PASM 's parameters so it will be good to see if using your setup whether you do or don't. Do you have any sort of guarantee up front that if the springs do cause a problem you can get your money back , etc? I appreciate you taking this risk for everyone and look forward to the reports as well as what you thought of them on the track and just everyday street use.

When PASM fails its designed to go full firm. Or so I thought?

It shuts down, I don't know if that means it stays in whatever mode it was in when it broke, or if it goes into sport or non-sport as a default safety measure, I would assume it would disengage as much as possible, but I could be wrong.

From the 997 owners I have seen post in regards to PASM failures vast majority were stock suspended cars. Failure has been a scarily common traitof the PASM unit. Water, (rain or car wash) was mentioned a number of times.