The stock GTi suspension especially when DCC (Dynamic Chassis Control) equipped is actually quite good even for spirited driving. However, one thing that bothers me is the slightly large wheel gap that detracts a bit from its otherwise sporty hot hatch stance.
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| Lowered on Eibach Prokit - 10/28/19 |
Rather than go overkill by installing fancy coilovers, all I really needed was a mild 25mm drop and perhaps adding a bit more front camber for better handling. To achieve this without affecting the stock dynamics too much, I decided to get Eibach Prokit springs and 034 Motorsports Dynamic+ camber mount.
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| 034 Motorsports Dynamic+ camber mounts - 10/28/19 |
The 034 Motorsports Dynamic+ camber mounts offer stiffer rubber bushings than factory and moves the top of the strut in to add 1.4 degrees of negative camber. Combining this with Eibach Prokit springs that lower the car 25mm all around increases the front camber to around -2.5 degrees, probably the upper limit of negative camber I'd want to run on a primarily street driven car.
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| Eibach ProKit - 10/28/19 |
Of course, if you're going through the effort to install new springs and camber mounts on a car, might as well replace the strut bearing and rear spring pads.
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| New strut mount bearings - 10/28/19 |
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| New rear spring pads - 10/28/19 |
I went to S
JF Performance today to get everything installed since I had to get the car aligned after installing the new springs anyway. The fronts were a bit tricky but once Steve figured out the best sequence to get the strut out on the driver side, the passenger side was much easier.
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| Front strut reinstalled with new spring and camber plate - 10/28/19 |
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| Rear springs in and sway bar fixed - 10/28/19 |
The rear springs should've been an easy affair with just three bolts holding the lower arm in place but as we were replacing the springs, we noticed how badly the rear sway bar was binding. It was so stiff that even disconnected on both ends it took a fair amount of force just to get the bar moving at all. This was installed by the previous owner and it simply wasn't done right. The grease in the bushing was wrong and the sway bar bushing bracket was too tight. We disconnected the rear bar and new grease applied to the bushing. A thing washer was added to the bracket to space it out just enough and now there's no more binding. It moves smoothly like butter. No wonder I was hearing some noise in the rear during more extreme cornering. Now the rear handles like it should.
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| RS7 (Beru 06K905601M) spark plugs |
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| RS3 (06H905110G-RED) Coil Packs |
Finally, since the car already has a CTS downpipe and an upgraded clutch, I'm planning on putting the APR Stage 2 High Torque tune. The previous owner commuted daily in the car so kept it pretty conservative with a Stage 1 low torque tune since he was putting almost 17K miles per year on the car but since I will probably only do a third of that, I figure why not. To prep for this, I decided to pop in RS7 spark plugs which are one step colder than the OEM plugs and are a great OEM option for tuned cars. The previous owner already upgraded to RS3 coil packs but that was 25k miles ago and I just wanted to make sure everything was in good order before upping the boost so a new set of RS3 coil packs were also put in.
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| RS7 plugs and RS3 coils installed - 10/28/19 |
I'm so glad we did this because it turns out the previous owner did not torque the plugs properly. They came out with very little effort, almost as if they were hand tight. Checking the torque on the plugs was already on my checklist when I bought the car since I knew the owner was kind enough to put in fresh plugs for me before handing the car over but didn't own a torque wrench. Anyway, with the new plugs installed and properly torqued to spec, the engine is running so much smoother. Idle feels great and power feels spot on.
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| Alignment Specs - 10/28/19 |
Finally, after driving the car a bit to let the suspension settle, we put the car up on the alignment rack. The front camber and caster is not adjustable but with me in the car, the camber is pretty sweet at -2.3 and -2.6 and the caster a perfect 7.7 degrees. I had Steve zero out the front toe. For the rear, the car ended up around -2.5 degrees after lowering. That's a bit too much on a FWD car. I wanted a one degree differential front to rear so Steve dialed the rear camber back to -1.5 and put a tiny bit of rear toe in to keep the car stable. The car feels phenomenal now. It corners a lot better and the new spring setup is perfectly European...firm yet compliant. Visually, it's a subtle change that makes a big difference.
Maintenance Updates:
Mileage: 51,263
- New RS7 Spark Plugs
- New RS3 Coil pack
