rear damper repacement

[sambb]

My rear dampers are shot and need replacing. My suspension is stock except for fully super-pro'd LCA bushes (offsets on the rear LCA bushes). In terms of just getting a pair of rear sport shocks it seems I can only get koni yellows and bilstein B6's. Which of the two has the mellowest damping that will suit the standard rear springs the best, considering also that the front will still have the standard struts/springs?

sorry to start a new suspension thread but found nothing on B6's in the search function.

sam

[brad]

koni yellow has the better initial compliance

[sambb]

Ok thanks for that.

To narrow the question its koni yellow on softest setting versus bilstein B6's.

Does anyone know if B6's are any different to B8's in any aspect other than the B8's having a shorter stroke?

As an aside, anyone in Sydney have a set of stock rear springs laying around that they don't want?

thanks

[noone]

Someone may have their original struts floating around from when they upgraded, original parts come up from time to time in the Classifieds section.

[blackbetty]

hey sambb, how many km's did the original shocks last you?

[sambb]

My car has only done 30,000km. Its not a case that they have failed completely (both sides are the same) but the car oscillates too much ie after hitting a depression in the road at speed which feels like its mostly coming from the tail, and the tail wafts around on 3rd gear sweepers.

I'm thinking now that i'll just stick with stock springs and go bilsteins/konis all round and see where i'll go from there. Maybe just make up a torsion beam clamp if the turn in is not what I want it to be. Bilstein just said they can't actually do a full B6 kit so its now bilstein B8's versus koni yellows.

Get this, Bilstein said the B8's will be fine with stock springs even though the stroke length is shorter and designed for lowering springs, and koni said they can only supply standard stroke length yellows for the polo but that they will work fine if I do choose to use lowering springs. What the! I thought it was a bit more of a science than that. What do you reckon?

[noone]

stiffening the rear shocks and leaving the front stock may be a little odd. with the high prices of the brands you're looking at, you could get a full set of coilovers from the uk for a little more.

Assuming you can get installed cheap / do yourself.

A lowered polo handles much better IMO.

[Bullet Fast]

As I understand it, Koni yellow adjustment is low speed rebound adjust only, which is particularly easy to engineer into a design at low cost. Softness is not adjustable so to speak, but over adjusting low speed rebound will hold the shock deeper in its stroke on consecutive bumps, effectively raising the spring rate and making the ride feel harsh.

Happy to be corrected on the Koni point if someone knows better.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

[sambb]

Oh yeah the only reason I was going to do the rears seperately was because I need to do them now and they are quick, cheap and easy to do but the fronts were always to follow.
No I'm not keen to go low eg H&R 30mm drop low because going that low generally always means a substantial increase in spring rate and for the rough Sydney national park type of roads that I love to punt the car through it just won't work for me. If down the track I do decide to go lower, I will only go slightly lower at the back (I definitely would like to test the theories of the Shine racing guys from the "Does your VAG handle?" thread in the suspension section) so there would be little point going for coilovers. I think I'd rather stay high quality with conventional strut/coil setup.
But I am hearing you - the dollars for these units does make me wince a bit and I'm not sure how I could source them cheaper!

[noone]

cheapest option could be one of many, normally Euroupe. DPM Performance is a good place to start, fair shipping I've found.

I say coilovers as I don't believe there to be much difference on our car between coilovers and strut / spring combos accept the perch height can be changed. If you want adjustment, lots of options. If you want stock height, should be fine. Definitely right about the uprated springs.

Happy to show you how my car is setup if you're interested, a nat park run over xmas could be good.