VWR springs ruined my stock shocks... what to choose from here?

[nicholam77]

Ok, I finally got everything installed. Man what a PITA for a first-timer.

I ended up trimming the bump stops per @SouthFL_Mk7.5 , 1/8" front and 1/4" rear. Roughly. The razor blade didn't do the cleanest job.

Didn't want to take the rears off that I had already installed, but was able to trim them on the car.

So I've had a chance to drive around for a few days, and here are my thoughts.

It's kind of a double-edged sword. On one hand, the new shocks are doing a better job damping overall. There are no huge crashes at speed. Especially the fronts are a noticeable improvement. On the other hand, I do find them stiffer than the stock shocks. For some reason I was expecting them to be about the same, but they feel tighter and firmer. I am feeling the road more, and I feel like there is a *tiny* bit more bounciness. It's not necessarily bad, and feels sporty, but idk maybe I was hoping for about the same level of comfort.

The one thing that kind of bugs me, is the rears have a harshness over larger bumps that I don't think was there before. About they same pre and post bump stop trimming.

Overall I think it's very livable for a daily driver, and keeps the look I want. But over larger bumps you are definitely made aware that it's a lowered suspension.

Part of me wonders if the coils would have been better or not, but maybe I'll give that a go in another 7 years.

 

[GoatAutomotive]

So on bump stops....firstly, they aren't stops....they are small progressive springs. Cutting them will likely make things worse b/c you may actually be sitting on them/in them at static...I have a post here with a bunch of info on this somewhere including measurements. IF you are sitting on them (not really an issue BTW...they are just spring helpers) and you cut them, it will drop it more and make the bottoming out even more harsh. One thing you can try....add spring rubbers. I have a post you can find showing these, about $14 at the auto parts store/Amazon...they will increase the spring rate slightly and will help with bottoming/harshness...did for me! I wouldn't cut the jounce bumpers.

Our Virginian track monkey speaks the truth. And lots of it.

Listen to the elders.

Also…ditch the VWR springs asap. They’ve been proven to be almost universally terrible on this platform due to insufficient spring rate and a low static ride height.

Eibach Golf R linear springs are a much smarter choice if you don’t want it too stiff.

S3/RS3 lowering springs if you want it firmer and further from the bump stops.

 

[SouthFL_Mk7.5]

Our Virginian track monkey speaks the truth. And lots of it.

Listen to the elders.

Also…ditch the VWR springs asap. They’ve been proven to be almost universally terrible on this platform due to insufficient spring rate and a low static ride height.

Eibach Golf R linear springs are a much smarter choice if you don’t want it too stiff.

S3/RS3 lowering springs if you want it firmer and further from the bump stops.

That’s interesting to claim something as universally horrible.. The VWR Spring/ Damper set on my GTI has been working incredibly well for a couple years now. The opposite of universally horrible. Rather well matched I’d say, and just the right ride height.

Proved my son and I a couple very great track day experiences and he always scored very quick lap times at the local autocross on those springs and dampers. The car is greatly balanced and rides rather comfortably for a car on lowering springs. I couldn’t be happier. I’d install them again on another GTI if I ever acquire another.

I’ve been tinkering with suspension setups for street cars on for track use going back to 2005 and have tried many spring/ damper setups and coilover setups and I really like the set and forget package of this VWR combo.

 

[JerseyDrew77]

Our Virginian track monkey speaks the truth. And lots of it.

Listen to the elders.

Also…ditch the VWR springs asap. They’ve been proven to be almost universally terrible on this platform due to insufficient spring rate and a low static ride height.

Eibach Golf R linear springs are a much smarter choice if you don’t want it too stiff.

S3/RS3 lowering springs if you want it firmer and further from the bump stops.

That’s interesting to claim something as universally horrible.. The VWR Spring/ Damper set on my GTI has been working incredibly well for a couple years now. The opposite of universally horrible. Rather well matched I’d say, and just the right ride height.

Proved my son and I a couple very great track day experiences and he always scored very quick lap times at the local autocross on those springs and dampers. The car is greatly balanced and rides rather comfortably for a car on lowering springs. I couldn’t be happier. I’d install them again on another GTI if I ever acquire another.

I’ve been tinkering with suspension setups for street cars on for track use going back to 2005 and have tried many spring/ damper setups and coilover setups and I really like the set and forget package of this VWR combo.

I have to agree with SouthFL. Before switching to my Fortune Auto coilovers, I had the Koni Yellows with VWR springs combo and they were great, had zero issues with them and ride height was spot on and handled my car very well. I think a lot of people have issues with them is when they use VWR springs with stock dampers.

 

[nicholam77]

Our Virginian track monkey speaks the truth. And lots of it.

Listen to the elders.

As I'm sure you read in the thread... too late on the bump stops. Although I'm not convinced trimming them the small amount I did actually made any difference.

Also…ditch the VWR springs asap. They’ve been proven to be almost universally terrible on this platform due to insufficient spring rate and a low static ride height.

What? I just finished the install and there's no way in hell I would be throwing away that time and money to completely swap out the setup immediately.

I'm not defending the VWR springs as a perfect setup or anything, but I wouldn't call them "universally terrible", either. Have you personally ridden in a car with them and found that to be the case then? I've had them for 6.5 years and they've suited my needs for the most part.

 

[snobrdrdan]

Ok, I finally got everything installed. Man what a PITA for a first-timer.

I ended up trimming the bump stops per @SouthFL_Mk7.5 , 1/8" front and 1/4" rear. Roughly. The razor blade didn't do the cleanest job.

Didn't want to take the rears off that I had already installed, but was able to trim them on the car.

View attachment 294193

You trimmed the wrong end of the bump stop!

You need to cut that plastic ring off, and then cut the lower part of the bump stop at the line/section underneath that plastic ring

Even Eibach tells you to do that too, btw:

 

[SouthFL_Mk7.5]

https://www.golfmk7.com/forums/index.php?threads/bump-stops-to-trim-or-not-to-trim.340066/

Oldie but varying info here. Mentions of trimming top or bottom.

 

[tigeo]

You are still on your bump stops, keep this in mind factory R bump travel is front 45-50mm and rear 20-25mm take a look for your self.

This - really need to measure it....on the Sportwagen with H&R Sport springs and B8s, I had a small amount of "free" travel in the rear before the jounce bumper was contacted and in front, I was on/in the internal bumper at resting ride height.

 

[nicholam77]

Sorry for the delayed reply, but I have a few questions and hoping you guys can help clarify.

I'm still feeling like the rears in particular are overly harsh. More than they were with the stock dampers with the same springs. I only trimmed a tiny bit from the rear bump stops (1/4") and the result was the same before and after doing that.

So I understand that I may be engaging or close to engaging the bump stops at static. But... is there any way to reduce the harshness? I feel like some of you are saying riding on the bump stops is part of the problem, but then some are saying not to trim them. Wouldn't trimming them provide more travel for the shock? I'm not sure how much the Eibach springs are meant to lower, but the VWR's are about 1.2" in the rear I think, so fairly significant. Eibach is suggesting to trim the rear stops by 1.25"!! Which is way, way more than I did.

You are still on your bump stops, keep this in mind factory R bump travel is front 45-50mm and rear 20-25mm take a look for your self.

So are you saying they should be trimmed more? Or no?

How can I measure this or inspect it — measure the center of hub to fender when on the ground, and then put the car on stands with the wheel off and jack the hub up to that same height and see where the bottom of the bump stop is? And then trim so I have 20-25mm between the top of the rear shock and bottom of the rear bump stop?

You trimmed the wrong end of the bump stop!

You need to cut that plastic ring off, and then cut the lower part of the bump stop at the line/section underneath that plastic ring

Even Eibach tells you to do that too, btw:

In retrospect that makes sense. Fortunately since I only took a little off, it still friction fits into the mounts fine.

This - really need to measure it....on the Sportwagen with H&R Sport springs and B8s, I had a small amount of "free" travel in the rear before the jounce bumper was contacted and in front, I was on/in the internal bumper at resting ride height.

So with the H&R sports + B8 did you do anything about it? Or just live with very limited free travel? I know H&R sports go pretty low, too, and I've always heard B8 is on the stiffer side. People seem to be saying VWR is trash, but considering your combo is also low and I'm assuming firm, how is your ride?

I tried to find your posts on the measurements and spring rubbers without luck.

If trimming the bump stops makes the harshness worse, why would Eibach suggest such a large trim?

---

Also want to reiterate that on a good road, it feels awesome. It's larger cracks, potholes, uneven sections of pavement, things like railroad tracks, that feel overly harsh to me.

Maybe eventually I'll try coilovers, but for now I'm sticking with what I just installed. Sorry for the noob questions, just trying to learn and understand it better and see if anything further could / should be done aside from replacing the setup entirely.

 

[tigeo]

Sorry for the delayed reply, but I have a few questions and hoping you guys can help clarify.

I'm still feeling like the rears in particular are overly harsh. More than they were with the stock dampers with the same springs. I only trimmed a tiny bit from the rear bump stops (1/4") and the result was the same before and after doing that.

So I understand that I may be engaging or close to engaging the bump stops at static. But... is there any way to reduce the harshness? I feel like some of you are saying riding on the bump stops is part of the problem, but then some are saying not to trim them. Wouldn't trimming them provide more travel for the shock? I'm not sure how much the Eibach springs are meant to lower, but the VWR's are about 1.2" in the rear I think, so fairly significant. Eibach is suggesting to trim the rear stops by 1.25"!! Which is way, way more than I did.



So are you saying they should be trimmed more? Or no?

How can I measure this or inspect it — measure the center of hub to fender when on the ground, and then put the car on stands with the wheel off and jack the hub up to that same height and see where the bottom of the bump stop is? And then trim so I have 20-25mm between the top of the rear shock and bottom of the rear bump stop?



In retrospect that makes sense. Fortunately since I only took a little off, it still friction fits into the mounts fine.



So with the H&R sports + B8 did you do anything about it? Or just live with very limited free travel? I know H&R sports go pretty low, too, and I've always heard B8 is on the stiffer side. People seem to be saying VWR is trash, but considering your combo is also low and I'm assuming firm, how is your ride?

I tried to find your posts on the measurements and spring rubbers without luck.

If trimming the bump stops makes the harshness worse, why would Eibach suggest such a large trim?

---

Also want to reiterate that on a good road, it feels awesome. It's larger cracks, potholes, uneven sections of pavement, things like railroad tracks, that feel overly harsh to me.

Maybe eventually I'll try coilovers, but for now I'm sticking with what I just installed. Sorry for the noob questions, just trying to learn and understand it better and see if anything further could / should be done aside from replacing the setup entirely.

Firstly, you simply cannot lower a car, reduce bump travel, and expect a near-stock ride. Can't happen. The springs/jounces give you a progressive ramp-up in the spring rate so you don't slam/bottom harshly but you will blow through your travel more frequently, just how it is when you lower it.

On my car, the H&Rs and B8s work fantastic including slamming curbs on track. I have the not touched the internal stops in the B8s but did add the rubbers to give me a little less drop and slightly more progressiveness for that ramp up to prevent the harshness I was getting in some situations - ideally I would replace the internal stops with ones that are the same length but a bit higher progessive rate. In the rear, the GSW jounces are a bit longer than the GTI/R so I swapped in the R ones...I really didn't notice any difference.

My point about saying to not trim the stop IF you are on the them already is that the car will drop a touch and you will have an even more progressive ramp up and possibility of bottoming - that's just my thinking on it.

For the measuring, jack the car up, take a zip tie and put it around the damper shafts so it's at the damper, lower the car slowly as to not have it bounce, then jack it back up, and measure how far the zip tie moved up the shaft - not super easy but I was able to get it "good enough" with a tape measure. That's your droop travel/tells you the static height. Do the same but now go out and drive it, try to hit some bumps, speed bump to get max compression. Jack it back up and do the same thing, then do the math to figure out the bump travel. I have posted some info here w/r to the B8s on my car and how to figure it out based on some info from Bilstein and some others here.

Playing with measuring bump travel at the wheel:
https://youtube.com/shorts/8NDWFYTMBXw?si=h48fdUC7zo2emY0U

Start at 2:20 in this one for harsh bottom out:
https://youtube.com/shorts/r8qqlb0MRqA?si=RvliGyaKVPW2EUfn

Post-spring helpers (compared to the one above):
https://youtube.com/shorts/r8qqlb0MRqA?si=RvliGyaKVPW2EUfn

In conclusion - I don't think you need to trim them or at least shouldn't to start/figure out where you are etc. like above. I feel like leaving them alone gives you more resistance to bottoming out harshly but that does slightly increase the normal/resting spring rate a bit doing that but does give you a bit more travel when you trim them. You can see how much they compress comparing in my table the jounce bumper length to the block height....they compress a lot but the spring rate at the end is probably nearly infinite!

 

[nicholam77]

@tigeo thank you for taking the time to write a detailed answer!

Firstly, you simply cannot lower a car, reduce bump travel, and expect a near-stock ride. Can't happen. The springs/jounces give you a progressive ramp-up in the spring rate so you don't slam/bottom harshly but you will blow through your travel more frequently, just how it is when you lower it.

Totally fair. And I am not expecting "stock". But... I had been on these springs with the stock shocks for quite awhile, so that's what I'm comparing it to. VWR springs + stock shocks vs. VWR springs + the new VWR shocks. With the refreshed setup with the VWR shocks, I am feeling like the rears are harsher than the fronts, and it wasn't like that before. I can't say why, since the shocks are the same height and everything, and I didn't have the bump stops trimmed before.

I appreciate your research-based approach to figuring out what to do with your car, but I don't have the time to do a full investigation like that this season (it's getting cold here in MN and my 2 yr old and 5 yr old keep me busy).

I swapped over to my winter wheels and tires today, so I tried to take some measurements. The zip tie method is clever, but I didn't have a chance to drive around and find a speed bump, the main mission was to get the wheels swapped. So I measured the center of wheel to the top of the fender arch, which was 13-1/16" both sides. Then got the car on 4x stands, level, and attempted to jack a rear corner up to that height, placing the jack under the rotor. At about 12" fender-to-hub-center it started lifting the car off the jack stand in that corner. Not sure why but maybe the weight is distributed differently with the wheels on the ground? Anyways, I measured the top of the damper to the bottom of the bump stop at that point, and then subtracted the additional 1" to approximate the static height. If that approach and my math checks out, it would seem the rears are *almost* resting on the bump stop at static. And this is after the 1/4" I previously trimmed off the top.

I know you say it's not necessarily a problem to be resting on the bump stops at static, but I just feel this is contributing to the harshness I am feeling over bumps.

So I cut them

This time off the bottom. The amount I cut is about ~20mm which I think should give ~20mm of free travel since it seemed to be about contacting the bump stop before. Which is in line with what @Track R suggested. And a bit less than the Eibach instructions even when you add in the 1/4" I already did on the top. I left the white plastic ring because I don't know it's purpose.

Turns out a small flush cut saw works great to trim the foam. Much easier and cleaner cut than the razor blade.

Post trim:

I get what you're saying about trimming them reducing the amount of resistance or "cushion" on a harsh bottom out. I'm hoping that since I took ~1" off what's essentially a ~4" foam spring, there will still be enough.

If not, I saved the trimmed pieces and I feel like they could even be glued back on with CA glue.

Ride height in the rear appears to be the same as before this 2nd trim. I'll have to take a precise measurement tomorrow.

And for the results:

It seems to have made a positive difference. Like, noticeably so. Granted, it's not apples-to-apples because I switched wheels and tires, too. These are 17's vs the summer 18's, and I'm sure they are lighter, and have the extra inch of sidewall to help soak up road imperfections, too.

That being said, the rear feels comparable to the front now, and while firmer than stock, I'm not getting the harsh crashing feeling from before. At least in the limited test drives I was able to do today.

I'd be really curious to see how it feels with the summer setup back on, but that will come next spring. I avoid pot holes like the plague, but if I end up having bad bottoming out experiences, I'll just order some new bump stops. For now I feel like it was the right choice. I will report back if that changes after driving it this way for a few weeks.

Again, I appreciate the knowledge and input!

 

[snobrdrdan]

Wouldn't trimming them provide more travel for the shock?

Yup

Like I posted before, remove the plastic trim ring & trim some more

 

[tigeo]

Glad you got it sorted out. Another way to easily see the rear at least is to just remove the boot/slide it down, then drop the car back down and look...you can see how much free travel before the bump stop is contacted. I'm definitely not saying not to trim them, but I think many folks think these are hard stops when really they are just progressive spring helpers. I know for example my H&R kit said not to trim them but some do so probably just go with whatever they say. I did spend a bit of time on this and I understand that many aren't doing Master Thesis here hahahaha. Another thing you can do that many talk about is removing that plastic "cock ring" over the end. Bump stops are a good suspension tuning tool that many overlook - Steve Dinan really dives into in a pod cast I listened to.

 

[Klrider44]

Do we know what the spring rates are on the VWR springs?

 

[Karthoum]

Just jumping in to give my perspective. It seems to me, that if the factory stops are designed to sit at a particular height for factory setup up, and you drop the suspension by say 25mm, the stop should be cut by that drop amount (or close to it) to allow the same room for before you hit the stop.

1/8"(3mm)-1/4"(6mm) cut from a stop that now has the body 25mm closer would do very little in my view. Everything must drop equal or you will hit the stop much sooner over the same bump as the stock set up because uncut it physically has less room to take up.

Seems like a no brainer to me.