JALE

So, I just recently installed my KW Variant 1 suspension and I'm not to pleased with the outcome. The car is about 1" lower than stock and I can't go any lower without rubbing the front strut - even using 10mm spacers.

Current Stock AMG wheels are 17x7.5 ET 37 (+10mm spacers) 225/45/17

I just received my new wheels which are 19x8.5 ET 35 and 19x9.5 ET 40. I did a test fitment with no tires on the front and it looks like i will have to raise the car or the tires will rub on the adjustment collar. Using 10mm spacers as well

Anyone else have this issue?

togaclk55

Yup....I'm running ET26 with 235/40/18 up front and can't go any lower than around 1 finger gap or else it rubs.

JALE

Is this for all brand w209 coilovers or just KW coilovers?

togaclk55

I'm on KW, no idea about H&R or Bilstein

JALE

Thanks for responding. For anyone else, what suspension allows you to go lower than kw?

Klinh

All the coilover kit for our car all need spacers if you want to lower down to 1 finger fenders gap, with stock wheel offset. If you don't want to use spacers then you need to get wheels with custom offset.

omega48er

Hay Klinh,
I been asking this all over the forums. im in the market for a new suspension setup. i am running (waiting to install)19x8.5 et.32 19x10 et.36 . i have 2 options and want to keep it under a grand. my main concern is that i do not want to run spacers!
1) H&R springs with koni yellow.
2)coilovers: H&R (kind of upset they dont have dampening adjustment) D2 racing, BC racing, Ksport Kontrol pro or tien basic(I believe they do not have dampening adjustment as well)

Nero Tenebre

I had a huge ordeal with my KW V2, they rubbed my tires so bad they tore and left me stranded. They also melted the perch where it made contact and burned the powdercoat off the spring. Luckily they still work perfectly and are still even adjustable but that is some bull****. I ordered them through modbargains.com and they should have read the install notes which are posted in the KW site and warned me about the issue prior to ordering. The site clearly says wheel spacers may be needed with oem wheels. Now I've bought 10mm spacers to see if that helps but it looks like you need 20-25mm to be safe but that is an inch which is huge. Guys who arent wide body may have a difficult time finding wheels that fit. Custom offsets wont help if you want to go wider. Now I have to consider getting new wheels to fix this **** even though my custom made HREs fit perfectly before with my PSS9 which cost less and were 2 way adjustable not just 1 way! My car rides and handles great but so did my bilsteins. Frankly I am hugely pissed with KW and the only reason I bought them was bc they are the oem suspension for the black series clk63- which is also why you can't buy the v3 through anyone but Mercedes for a small fortune. Now I'm stuck with it unless I want to lose a ton of money selling at a loss which is what I did last time and get hit with install costs again too. Oh, and the rears are not easily height adjustable because these fools put the adjustment at the bottom of the spring which sits inside the rear sub beam and is inaccessible without uninstalling it which is a *****.

Alexbenz

A lot of the w203 guys had this problem as well...spacers I guess did the trick but I'd search in their section and see what was done.

JALE

pretty much my experience with them! had to run a 10mm spacers in front to clear the brakes. I dont mind running spacers, just wish i was able to go about .5" lower. plus, there customer service is a joke!

Tenebre, were you able to go lower on the PSS9 without the clearance issue?

Pexi

This is interesting. I need to test how low I can go, just out of curiosity, as I've got the Bilstein kit installed.

omega48er

this is what im talking about, we should make a astickie with all this info. i mean my budget is about a grand at the moment so im thinking about going with HR with koni yellow, or CO: tein basic, HR street, Ksport Kontrol pro, D2 racing or BC.

Nero Tenebre

I was able to drop it much, much lower on the PSS9 and had zero problems with clearance, I really thought about ordering that again but the whole situation just makes me sour and I'm tired of wasting thousands on this. At least if I got new wheels I would get the benefit of a new look too, though I still lose 1" of width I could have otherwise used for more tire which is unfair. Right now I have a tremendous amount of lateral grip and traction from wide tires so I hesitate to lose that. What kind of company makes a replacement suspension that can't just be swapped in and fit right with other OEM equipment like the wheels-- AND this company is the OEM supplier?? Do we have grounds for a class action lawsuit since so many seem to have been blindsided by this?

I'm not sure why KW would design this in such a way as I did not look into it but I know the reason they are generally more expensive than other coilovers is because they use quality dampers with a lot of fluid volume for heat dissipation and so they can use soft springs (the damper is doing more work to suspend the car instead of the spring). That is why it is expensive to achieve both ride comfort and performance together- springs are cheap but dampers aren't. Plus they have that expensive post tester that F1 teams use to design suspension... actually I have no complaints with the performance and ride quality.

I can't state conclusively but my theory is that the damper tube is bigger and the spring is therefore wider.... my tires contacted both the spring and perch around the tube. Also I believe the Bilsteins are a "monotube" design and not a twin tube like the KW. I had both together and I wish I would have compared dimensions but I would never have expected the KW designs to be so flawed. I think Bilstein may have a patent on the monotube design but I may be recalling incorrectly. It allows for a larger piston for more fluid displacement whereas a twin tube would be wider to achieve the same displacement. I would bet that is exactly what happened. Also, from looking at pictures (see link below), you may actually be able to adjust the rear ride height on the PSS9 without uninstalling the coilovers because they made their spring perch tall enough that the threads stick up out of the rear sub beam. Also the knob adjustment on the PSS9 is an easy way to adjust them without a special tool and you get to have 2-way compression and rebound instead of the 1-way rebound only that the V2 has for the same price. Also monotubes are reputed to have less height adjustability than twin tube but I found that the drop range and number of threads were greater on the PSS9. WTF KW!

http://www.tirerack.com/suspension/s...t&cat=CoilOver

DiceCedes

I had the same issue with wheels and KW. I even went with HREs and the first set did rubbed because the offset was ET32. I had to research the heck out of the C class thread to guess the offset that would clear the brakes but not rub against the perch. I eventually worked with HRE to build at ET26. Let me tell that was one stressful day at the install. It cleared both sides but the tires do not tuck. So no way ET35 is going to work.

Nero Tenebre

Hey just to make sure you understand what happened- you only reduced the offset by 2mm from 37 to 35, but you also widened the wheels so you would have less clearance than you did before. That could have easily been figured out with a wheel calculator before you bought those wheels...

For example, 1 inch is about 25mm. Your new wheels at 19x8.5 +35 started with 10.5mm (25mm/2 then minus 2mm) less clearance than your old wheels, and even with the 10mm spacer you only basically put the wheel position back to where your old 7.5" wheel was for inner clearance so there should have been no surprise it didn't fit again. Did you try the 10mm spacer with your old wheels?? That might even work, according to DiceCedes experience where he changed is offset by 10mm. That was actually my next step though it will become an aggressive fitment in my case, which I am trying to avoid.

So if you had used a 25mm spacer with your 7.5" wheel you would have likely gained the clearance you needed by my measurements and your offset would have become 17x7.5 +12 (37-25mm) and could have still fit under the fender due to the narrow width. After measuring and confirming, you just get a 25mm hubcentric spacer and extended lug nuts (measure your shank length and add 25mm to determine which length you need). Of course, measure 1" out from your wheels to see if they will fit under the fender and clear the spring perch (adjustment collar) before you go that route.

It's still a compromise to make because you lose wheel width you could have possibly had and that has an opportunity cost. But if you're stuck then it may be an acceptable compromise and definitely cheaper than new wheels or new suspension. I am looking into another creative solution to this problem that sounds promising right now so I will report back if KW engineers say it's ok. I'm running it by them first because the whole advantage to buying coilovers is that its a properly matched damper/valving/spring combination and I don't want to upset the balance of it by modifying/hacking it up (and the springs in this case are progressive not linear).

greekspec2

read my post.......

https://mbworld.org/forums/wheels-ti...-w209-clk.html

Nero Tenebre

Great pic here, thanks for posting them! So from your pics, it looks clearly like you don't have the clearance issues because you are running a super stretched tire and the wheel is sitting much further in than your tire. Imagine a full width tire on there and you can see it would definitely contact the perch and the spring just like it did on mine. A shorter spring may be a solution but there are other factors to consider which I want to investigate a little. The perch has to stay up high to stay clear of the tire which is a fundamental problem bc you would lose a lot of suspension travel with a shorter spring which can potentially ruin the ride quality and suspension performance and you have to worry about the spring rate and if it's matched to the damping properties of the shock correctly.

This is the whole reason to get coilovers in the first place so it's kind of unfair to have to compromise between wheel/tire fitment, ride height, and ride quality when you're spending so much on an engineered system like coilovers that are supposed to deliver on all 3 counts. That is very disappointing but I guess we are all stuck with them now anyways so we can at least try to make the best of it. Suspension tuning is very complicated so that's why I want to get feedback from the KW engineers first before jumping into anything like cutting coils which was an option I was going to look into though it has a bad reputation from ricers pursuing cheap lowering. Plus the springs are progressive and not linear so that complicates it further as the rate changes when compressed, though these become linear at the top which is where I was exploring cutting the coil from to shorten the spring.

greekspec2

reread what I said....I run my stock C55 wheels with no spacers at that same drop with no contact to the perch or spring....the shorter the spring the lower initial drop and the higher you can raise your perch common rule

greekspec2

I deal direct with the engineers in Germany dont waste your time with them here....
KW front spring rate for W203/W209
spring# 67 25 001 01 VA
shock# 25 001 01 VA
spring rate 108-142-685 lbs/in
untensioned length 285mm
wire diameter 13,4mm
outer diameter top 172mm
outer diameter bottom 88mm
number of coils 8

Nero Tenebre

OK gotcha. Yes you are right about that but you need to know what else you are doing when you change the springs unless you are just after the drop.

Thanks for the spring info! Did you just give this to H&R/Bilstein/Swift when shopping for new springs?

greekspec2

bilstein springs E4-FD1-Y654A00
spring rate 60N/mm 342 lbs/in
untensioned length 239mm
wire diameter 14mm
outer diameter top 174mm
outer diameter bottom 62mm
number of coils 6

blackhouse

I too was going to buy some kw v2 but with this talk about rubbing and not fitting, what does the forum think about bc racing coilovers , br or er i saw these from a friend that just them on a bmw m3 and they look hella tight with a great price ...$995.00 out the door and installed by ess tuning i believe. also looking for some info on the stance coilovers too.

Nero Tenebre

BC coilovers offer tremendous value for street use. They are reportedly very good ride quality so that's why I say great for street, but do not offer the same advanced testing like KW and their damper is not as good either so they won't have the same ultimate performance as the top ones. They will likely be better than Teins or other brands which use high spring rates to make up for cheap dampers and for <$1k they are surely a better solution to lowering than just getting springs (which won't be matched to dampers)to lower your car. Alternatively you could get Bilstein shocks/springs but then you cannot fine tune your ride height or adjust your compression/rebound settings either so I would get the BC unless you are willing to dish out some extra for the PSS9 or buy used. I sold my PSS9 used for about what you can buy BC for new IIRC. I cannot speak to their longevity either but KW and Bilstein both have been proven to last a lifetime.

omega48er

after reading all these posts, i think ill just go with h&R springs and koni yellow !!! wish coilovers would fit as they are suppose to =[

greekspec2

at the moment I'm having 60mm front upper spring adapters being custom made for my C55 KW's so I can run any rate and length spring on my coilovers,do you guys think this is something other C55 and CLK55 owners would be interested in since it would be a first of its kind and allow you to tune your car for track or a better street performer