garno

Morning chaps,

Simple question. By how much if any does the cars suspension drop when you press the sport button on your dash? Car has airmatic not ABC. thx

1bad540

not much!

newtoforum2016

not must is right,,but it will be a little stuffer..

alx

actually i believe the answer for the w221 is "none". your spring rates are halved, but ride height remains the same. in both modes however the car will lower at roughly 70mph depending on few things

1bad540

alx whats your take on putting lowering links on the car?

alx

no need if you have star/das. normally it will not allow you to calibrate height that is too low, but there are ways to trick it so you can save the lower settings as valid...

if you dont have star/das, you can certainly do lowering links

however, in both cases lowering will change your toe-in and camber and car needs to be aligned at the new height.

also, you dont want to abuse it (ie too low) as you will get outside of the shocks working zone and it will lead to premature shock failure- especially for airmatic shocks. abc shocks are a different story- they dont seem to suffer if they are compressed a bit too much... at least i have not seen abc shocks fail due to lowering... but i have seen airmatic ones clunk if too low and eventually leak.

my personal w221 runs stock height.

garno

I will be installing airmatics evolution lowering links reducing the ride height by a modest 20 to 30mm in the next week or so and let you know how I get on. Just a note to say my wheels are stock 18" 9.5 rears and 8.5's front. It just doesn't look right with the gap at the arches though. I'm not a 20" wheel fan as the small discs in my opinion just doesn't look right.

superpop

I went from 18" to 19" with spacers in the rear and it made a huge difference. I would do that before messing with the geometry of the suspension by tricking it with links.

DaveW68

IMO, 18" wheels look way too small on a car as big as the S-class. 20" wheels with the right style seem to be the perfect fit on these cars. I really don't think people are looking at the size of your brake discs when they get a look at your car. And honestly from what I've read, the stock discs actually stop the car in a shorter distance than those large AMG brakes. There really wouldn't be any point spending multi thousands of dollars on AMG brakes unless you were planning to make your car a track day star.

20" wheels will actually improve the handing of your car and make it less wallowy, while maintaining a very smooth ride. They seem to give the perfect balance between a smooth ride, handing, and good looks. The only reason to go with a smaller wheel with a taller tire profile would be if you drive on some brutal roads with lots of potholes.

wilassasin

The car is definitely lowered when in sport suspension and sits a bit higher when not in sport as you can see in the wheel gap. You can tell better when the car is parked on uneven surface but in any event do what I did and change the suspension then measure the wheel gap. I actually parked in front of my house stood across the street and did a comparison and noticed a difference that way as well. Hope this helps, thanks.

1bad540

would u think a 1" drop would damage the shocks? what mileage would u say they should go at? I dropped mine 1" on links and the rear air shocks went. Now i have it stock with stock height but I like how it looks with the 1" drop. car had 45k miles when the rear shocks went out.

garno

Thanks to Mark Wells at airmatic-lowering-kits. Car lowered a modest 25 to 30mm. I'm very pleased with the results.