RON430

Riding around with guys who have done mods and seeing how you like theirs is a great idea. The big problem, in all honesty, is getting a real feel for it. Anyone who can ride in a car for ten minutes and tell how they will like it for three or four years is an amazing person. Test drives before you buy the car are invaluable but obviously, the dealer is counting on you being blinded by the new car and keeping the ride relatively short and on roads that they have a pretty fair idea are great. And of course, the dealer has a huge advantage with a set of tires that have ten miles on them. But man, it is a resource that you should take advantage of if possible. The second big problem is you never know if there is something broken on his car that is making ride/handle better with the mods than they will on your car or vice versa. Sometimes you haven't put a lot of miles on but you park outside and some bushings are shot or you got wheel bearings or ball joints submerged and they are binding or a link has cracked and you never know about it. Heck, leaky shocks can give lousy handling but a nice soft ride. Replace them and you swear you made the worlds worst choice because now the car rides like a buckboard.

In the GS, the "handling" portion of the ride/handling equation isn't as important as the "ride" side. Almost any minimal improvement will get rid of the freeway float that we all hate so much. I have a pretty good compromise but overall, it is a bit harsh for my tastes, and I definitely lean toward the sporty side of the spectrum. Actually that is the good news. The bad news is that unless we can talk W into bombing that cursed Nurburgring, auto makers will continue to "develop" their suspensions, especially for performance models, on that billiard table in the woods. There is no greater enemy of good ride with handling in the real world than the Nurburgring. The reason this is a real negative is that I have noticed that quite a few cars are on the harsh side out of the box. Bimmers used to have an almost magical mix of ride and handling that built their reputation. Between trying to get the lap times lower on the 'ring and their purely stupid notion to use run flats, they no longer have that balance. And we can all blame ourselves for making sure that the tire makers understand that the only thing that is important to us is to have a lifetime set of tires for our car no matter how noisy, ill handling, and rough riding they get after ten thousand miles. Nothing better than getting fed up and buying new tires just to have skippy, or his manager Skippy, come out and tell you you have a lot of tread left. Obviously we are too stupid to know that the wear bars aren't showing. I like to take my tread depth gauge out and measure and tell him that I thought I had more than that left.

Oh well, good luck to everyone.

Vic Nyce

iTrader: (2)

haha you said it best. we shall see what happens after i install these
Bilstein Sport shocks/struts AND H&R SPRINGS, for GS/SC, GREAT CONDITION!
wondering if i should wait for winter to pass or if i should just throw em on.