Low cost track suspension advice

MrFancypants said:

Tadope said:

Yeah. It is probably because the tt is an audi sports car, and they had to add all sorts of goodies to the vw golf chassis it rides on.

I think I know enough about the mk1 TT to comment. I'm pretty sure the extra camber comes from the ball joints, they're slotted in a way that allows you to pull the bottom out for a little extra camber. It may get you enough camber, but I wouldn't rule out camber plates.

I have an aftermarket set on my GTI to get a bit of extra camber (~.5) and I love them, but when you push them out all the way you're moving the whole wheel and tire, so at certain loads and steering angles I now get a bit of rubbing on the fender liner. So you may find that getting your camber that way restricts your tire width to a small degree. I'm not competing so I'm happy with 225 width tires, so I'm good.

Oohh, I never thought of that. So in a way it is similar to adding a little bit of track width (or offset).  
That makes sense. But I think that's just how macphereson struts are. there's no way for the wheel to move independently of the strut. So any car with mac strut will be like that. 
Also alignment is a must.  But you're rubbing you can simply just change your wheel offset. Or do what people usually do, which is rolling fenders, or cutting fender liner. 
lots of tricks to get more space and avoid rubbing.

UPDATE

so i got suspension on! This is a temporary setup to learn the car before shelling out for a proper setup. But it is fun.  I literally got the cheapest thing you possibly could. RETURNED maxpeedingrod coils.  Ie discounted because they were returned then resold on ebay. $150!!

result.   They're not half bad! The springrate info was available so i know they are 380f/320r. And the coils were still new never installed.

damper quality was good for the fronts. Good firmness pushed in and return out fine. 
however the rears are TERRIBLE .  Push them in and they dont even return all the out fully.  Also lots of burbly noises.  Lesson learned never use the rears from these kits.

it makes sense though. The rears are not a true coilover on the TT chassis. The spring and shock are totally separate.

i ended up just throwing some $50 new oem rears on.  I have a set of linear rate springs to try different rates as well.  400. 350 and 300.  So well see.

driving quality seems perfectly fine for such an insane price.  With only a few days testing id say the main thing i notice is that they control the car well at low ride heights. It could use more rebound damping though

I mean especially given the source I'm not saying the rear dampers aren't bad or that OEM dampers weren't the better choice. But just what you described about them doesn't necessarily mean that they're broken (especially if they both behave approximately the same way), just that they don't have very much gas pressure. Which isn't great but isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I hope they last better than the few sets I tried! One snapped the lower mount. One set the rear shocks blew out suddenly and coated everything in oil! Good luck! 
 

stock suspension with a double stacked front bump stop is my go to for truly cheap track performance. 

In reply to dps214 :

I agree. They seem as they they were simply not filled with much gas. Which is a little silly. But again, not surprising, as the rear often has a lot less forces/work hitting it than the front .So i'm not surprised to see a lazy shock. 
I also noticed that the top of the shocks are actually threaded with little notches for a tool to open them up. Very tempting to see if these maxpeeidngrods could be rebuilt into something actually good!

In reply to CatDaddy :

What's a double stacked bumpstop do?  Doesn't that just add more springrate? 

And yes. I'm treating them as the cheap product they are. I'm going to try make sure they have plenty of suspension travel and not too high of a springrate on there.  hopefully they'll do ok?  Also i'm only running the fronts. The rears seem to be build lazily, so I would expect them to blow real easy.

Well after driving on it for a while i'll update.
For a $150 kit, I can't complain. Although I do admit, the dampers are definitely softer than I would want.
Springrates are not super hard, but definitely higher than oem. I think these cars run around 200lb springs.
My current setup is something like 300f/350r.  Honestly though, when just cruising, it only feels a little stiffer than oem. (but the oem had worn shocks, so that was probably rougher than it should be).
Under hard handling and bumps it actually controls the cars motion pretty well! I was pleasantly surprised.
The dampers are a bit soft so I was surprised how well it controlled the car under corning loads.

Still I can see where proper track ready coilovers would be a big improvement. I can't wait to get those going on some day!

Extra mileage update (not that anyone cares).

I can clearly compare this setup to a more legitimate damper (bilstein b8).

my daily is a mk4 jetta. with eibach street springs, and bilstein b8 shocks. 225 tires and wheel spacers.  (not very low)

The 01 TT budget suspension setup is a pretty interesting comparison:

lowest ride setting without getting into "dump zone" (zero fender gap and zero tire tuck) .
300-350lb linear springs.   new oem rear shocks.  MaxPeedingRods front coilovers!

Ok I have to admit. The damping quality on the audi TT setup vs the jetta is night and day.
maxpeeding/stock shocks just really suck at damping the springs oscilations. it's not a horribly bouncy ride.
but noticably more bouncy than the jetta. 
To be fair. the springrates on the jetta are progressive, and probably much much lower than the linear rates on my TT.
so the bilsteins have far less work to do.

But I got to admit that it is nice to notice shocks actually stopping a spring from rebounding.

In reply to Tadope :

When I was working on a budget setup for my MK4, I used springs off the VR6 wagon with B6 shocks and some R32 bushings and sway bars, worked well enough. It would probably be better than those coilovers.  

In reply to TR7 (Forum Supporter) :

probably. that would feel prettymuch the same as my mk4 jetta setup. b8 shocks are identical (just a shorter piston) and eibach prokit springs are similar to a short oe spring.   

The TT is really super low though. You can't go that low on b6's and oe springs.
honestly, a better comparison would be to put some eibach prokit or vr6 oe springs on the maxpeedingrods dampers.
I think the bilsteins would still be better. But it might not be such a huge difference.