Ebay Coilovers - Your Thoughts

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Originally Posted by greenerob

So I am thinking about upgrading my suspension to the M030 this winter. This morning I was looking on eBay on found these that are roughly in the same price range.
Does anyone have any thoughts or experience with these?

It really depends on your driving goals.

For sport tuned suspension on the street or the occasional DE, Porsche M030 ROW is hard to beat. It maintains good ride qualities along with a tighter feel, modest lowering, quicker transitions, and it is designed and engineered for your car so it is hard to screw up.

Once you make the leap from street tires to R comps and competitive driving events you may want a more tunable suspension to match your higher levels of grip and your driving style. This is where a good set of adjustable coilovers shine. Adjustability is a double edged sword though. Setting them up right is pretty critical and usually requires math and lots of experience. There are a lot of variables including ride height, rake, spring rates, dampening rates, complimentary sway bar settings, and alignment. Get just one or two wrong and your handling is often worse than stock... which defeats the purpose. About 1/2 the cars with coilovers I instruct in are set up well and make for a good driving experience. The other half are either too stiff, too twitchy, too much bump steer, too much wheel spin, or too unforgiving a novice driver.

If you have the knowledge and experience to do your own suspension setup or are willing to pay an experienced Porsche setup tech to really get it right, you will be rewarded with exceptional razor sharp handling characteristics. Very precise handling is also a double edged sword because it is very unforgiving. An experienced driver will learn to make the most of it on the track and turn very quick laps. A less experienced driver may find the car twitchy and any small mistake will immediately send him into the weeds.

Get very realistic about your driving goals and experience and discuss this with your setup tech before choosing a sport suspension.