ghoonk

Some time back, someone posted in EvoM about Bilstein shocks (or Ohlins ones) being pretty much the same parts that are used in NASCAR. I've spent the last 3 hours searching for 'Ohlins', 'NASCAR', 'custom', 'reservoir' and 'Bilstein' in various combinations and permutations and still have not been able to find that post.

This thread that I picked up elsewhere in this forum had me thinking of getting a custom-built set of coilovers : http://farnorthracing.com/autocross_secrets6.html

" Bilstein

Bilstein makes amazing shocks - they are mechanically simple, parts are dirt cheap and readily availible, and the innards of their street shocks and their full-race shocks are identical. Crack open a Bilstien street shock, and inside are the same parts as inside their NASCAR shocks. That means that there is a simple conversion process (involving welding a boss onto the shock body to fit a Shraeder valve into the gas chamber) to turn an off-the-shelf street Bilstein into a full-race, user-servicable, user-revalveable NASCAR Bilstein.

The hardest part of getting race shocks onto production based cars is fitment. Real Race Shocks mount with a standardized 1/2" heim joint, so that aside from body and shaft length, race shocks are all interchangeable. The OEMs, however, seem to chamge shock mounting methods and dimensions *****-nilly, so the trick for a production-based-car racer is finding somebody who makes a shock that fits. Bilstein, being a huge company (they are a division of Theissen-Krupp), makes a ton of fitments, so if you can get your hands on one - PRESTO! Convert it to a take-apart and you've got real racing shocks for a bargin price.

Bilstein's tech support was also easily the best I ever worked with. Bill Hindorff at Bilstein would design valvings for me to fit design curves, and he went way out of his way to teach me how to design my own shimstacks (partially, I suspect, so I'd stop bothering him to design me shimstacks). I got tons and tons and tons of help from Bill, way out of proportion to my importance, and the end result was me learning how to effectively tune shocks.

Some of that I intend to pass along here, later on.

There is only one small problem with Bilsteins: no knobs.

Bilstein does not really make adjustable shocks. They have a rebound adjuster (and they use it on the PSS9 series shocks) but it is really crappy and hard to tune - to the point of worthlessness. That turns out to not really be a problem for those inclined to tune shocks by revalving, but the average customer wants a knob to fiddle with and so Bilsteins wound up being a hard sell. Those that bought them were universally ecstatic with their performance, but it was tough work getting anyone to buy them when they could buy a shiny quadruple-adjustable from some no-name brand.

And those people were invariably unhappy....

You can add a compression adjuster to a Bilstein, by buying Penske or Ohlins remote canisters, throwing away the Shraeder valve and the separator piston, and attaching the remote to the valve hole - that what my personal shocks were - but that's a lot of money to get more weight and little extra fuctionality. It just isn't needed."

Can anyone here recall that thread and post the URL here? Thanks!

Czubaka

iTrader: (11)

I believe I have the link saved at home. I'll try looking for it when I get back.

Czubaka

iTrader: (11)

Here you go: https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/sh...bilstein+cobra

It's post 54 from FarNorthRacing.