Of those choices, the Ohlins DFV would be my go to, for sure. I don't love that they've "cheapened" their products by not including top hats and such on many of them, but the internals of the shock are what really matters and Ohlins is FANTASTIC in that regard.

I'd probably start at 12-18 clicks off of full stiff for street use and turn them up to 5 or 6 clicks off of full stiff for performance use, if you go with the Ohlins.

I ran R/T Ohlins on my Evo (first TST member journal back in 2011).

I am but an ape though and can't offer specific feedback like Doc can outside of "they were the best coilovers I've ever used".

Genuinely the best feeling suspension I've ever had on a car. Setup however they recommended for street use.

Thank you both! Trying to see if GMP can get them done by next weekend.

Ok, they got me in for next week! Fresh OEM strut top mounts, DCC cancellers, Ohlins R/T, alignment and track inspection.

Oil change and spark plug inspection.

Only weak link are the brake pads, I want pagid PSL29’s but won’t have the time.

I’ll be running in novice/intermediate so I’ll see if the car wants more than a 20 minute session. The pads on there will hold up to that just fine.

Sick, one more piece to your very well done OEM+ puzzle :)

Thank you 😊 I just hope I don’t regret these for a daily driver.

Mine were plenty comfy for street use, once turned down a bit.

I’m so excited! Will get my car back on Friday, then driving straight to Fastivus.

So curious how it goes for you!

Picked it up and it’s sitting about 20mm lower within the optimal range per Öhlins.

GMP set it to 7 clicks from full stiff, (which is within the Track/Winding Road range) after driving it at 12 clicks and it being super soft. They wanted to see what felt right to them.

They then went on a test drive loop with me to see how I liked it so they could adjust it before I left. My impressions are that it is very close to how my 997 felt, just with a touch more control and a smidge stiffer but not much. This suspension on the worst roads is better than the DCC.

The DCC used to bobble a bit after the hard bumpstop hit and now it just stays flat and compliant. One hit and it’s done.

Have never driven something with a suspension like this before. It’s going to take a track weekend to figure out how to describe it - I’m a bit in disbelief.

6 hour drive to Summit Point now done and about halfway through the trip I bumped stiffness down to 8 clicks from full stiff (1 click counter-clockwise). A subtle difference, makes me think the right answer for dad duty will be 10 clicks. 7 is perfect otherwise...8 loses a sliver of the edge.

Here's what I posted on the R forum:

You're right about them being soft out of the box - I'm honestly amazed that these are coilovers... A local shop (GMP Performance) has done a lot of Ohlins installs on Porsches and recommended them for my R, thinking I'd get something between a B12 kit and a B16 in terms of ride comfort. I'm running fresh OEM strut mounts since the Clubsport S mods are on my car and -2 is about perfect for my mix of driving.



Out the box and at Ohlin's recommended ride height setting (20mm or so lower than factory), they set them to 7 clicks from full stiff because the street settings were so soft. They then rode around a test loop with me at that setting to see if they needed to soften them up or not.



I gotta say - the closest thing I can compare them to is what my 997 Carrera felt like. Except a touch firmer and with more control. It's blowing my mind. They're incredibly streetable with both bars at full stiff and I'd have to say they remind me of DCC set to Race but with better control recovering from bumps. Incredibly smooth. I had been worried about losing DCC but after driving on these, that's out the window.



I knocked them down to 8 clicks from stiff just to see and that took a tiny bit of edge off, but still super controlled. Tomorrow I'll be on Shenandoah with them and will see how they do through the Karousel. So far I'm just blown away. There's some slight noise from things settling when you back out of spots, but no big deal, we'll see if that goes away with more miles.



If you can swing it and aren't heavy autocross/track, the out the box Ohlins are simply incredible.

Thoughts after the weekend on track? :)

I have many thoughts on these right now. Let me think about how to describe them.

On track at Shenandoah, I left them set to 8 clicks from full stiff and they handled everything fine. First session I cooked the brake pads and had pad fade after about 15 minutes of the 25 minute session. They were incredible at handling the bumps in the track and helping me navigate turns.

I could have gone up in stiffness a little bit but not sure it would matter at my skill level. I did two sessions total and on the second session, the instructor had me driving a lot slower to focus on my steering a bit more. He also had me lay off the throttle

On track, the R cooked the PS4S tires on the back straight and the XDS system would tap each individual corners brakes to try to stop the spinning, and so it created an odd ride sensation up to the 100mph limit I set to keep the pads happy. Looking at the inner tread later, the tires were definitely overwhelmed by the power of the EQT tune. The car has graduated to needing Wave Trac LSDs, so that's nice.

On the street, I came back to Charlotte's horrible roads and immediately started hating the Ohlins. They're just too stiff. I took the 19" wheels off and swapped back on the 18's, which has helped and have also adjusted stiffness down to full soft (too uncontrolled/bouncy on high compression), to one click off full soft (better but bottom out the shocks here and there).

The car is also sitting 20mm lower than stock, which was already 20mm lower than the GTI. It doesn't look slammed, but it's obvious the car is lowered a bit.

If I had to describe the ride on the street, it's firm, controlled but closer to race mode DCC without the bumpstop crashiness thanks to the DFVs.

While this is suitable for road, the Ohlins just aren't suited for the roads around here. With the money invested, I'm not sure what to do now with the car other than hoping my wife doesn't complain too much.

Longer term, as we do plan to move out of the city, they'll be absolutely great on less travelled roads with less construction and better maintenance. The roads here are just some of the worst i've ever experienced and frankly, they even give the Range Rover problems from time to time.

Now you might ask, then why the heck did you get coilovers? Well, after 43k on the OEM shocks in these roads conditions, they were nearing end of life and the ride had started to deteriorate on them as well. To replace them with OEM would have cost me $560 per corner ($2320) plus new tophats, install and alignment ($1600). So for roughly $1k more, I got Ohlins R/T with fresh top mounts. You could argue I could have just gotten some B4-B6-B8 shocks but they're out of stock nearly everywhere in DCC form and having had Bilstein before, I wanted something different. The reviews online really made this sound like the silver bullet and i'd say for 95% of the time they can be. I just happen to live mainly within that 5% right now.

Took the car out to the mountains (little Switzerland area), with shocks set to 8 clicks from stiff.

Wonderful suspension. I can tell the limitation really is having open differentials. Brakes were on point as well as the torquey tune from EQT.

I then turned them back down to 1 click from full soft and drove home in relative comfort. Ride is super smooth, until we hit Charlotte and the cross vehicle bumps eat up all of the strut travel and we pogo a bit.

We need to move.

I was going to ask if it's hitting bumpstops. That's the one real limitation of the Ohlins, they're kind of travel limited.

If it's not too much of a PITA you can raise the car to help with that.

Good question - the impacts where it’s hitting bump stops are harder for me to feel vs. stock due to the DFV. Can’t say it’s bottomed out yet definitively.

On my IG, you can see how much room I have left to raise the height - GMP said it’s in the recommended operating range but that doesn’t mean it can’t go a touch higher.

Not sure if possible but the shocks have seemed to loosen up a little bit recently and I’m within a click or two of finding the sweet spot with some experimenting I think.

There’s also the devil on my shoulder saying full send it and put the track settings back on. :lol: