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Author Topic: VW RacingLine Springs+Dampers kit  (Read 12520 times)

Offline pudding

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VW RacingLine Springs+Dampers kit
« on: August 05, 2017, 10:37:51 pm »
I fitted this kit around 1500 miles ago, travelling up and down the country, so I now feel ready to offer some feedback on it.

What is RacingLine and where are these springs and dampers you speak of?

RacingLine, formerly known as VW Racing, are an independent tuning company not affiliated with VW in the same way AMG is to Mercedes, but specialise in VW and have years of experience of tuning them for racing and fast road applications.  In short, they know the cars damn well and know what works and what doesn't  :happy2:

Trawl the forum and you will see many comments about VWR/RacingLine rebadging existing products as their own, and adding a hefty premium on top.  We shall gloss over that as it's not relevant for the sake of this review and shouldn't cloud your judgement. 

So here is the kit in question, and in my opinion extremely good value for those looking to refresh their ageing GTI and inject some life back into it - https://www.awesomegti.com/shop-by-car/volkswagen/golf-mk5/racingline-performance-spring-and-damper-kit-golf-mk5/

The stock suspension whilst surprisingly competent in the corners for a GTI (which lost it's way with the MK3/MK4), is crashy and unforgiving on road surfaces most modern cars don't even notice.  The Germans have the luxury of decent road surfaces on the majority of their road infrastructure, but we don't.  The quandary we all face at 100K miles is what to replace the tired suspension with.  I'm sure a complete overhaul of all of the OEM spec stuff would feel pretty good, but it's expensive, and you're not really upgrading/improving the situation in the long term.  The OEM Sachs dampers are reasonable at £60ish each, but the springs are silly money (and they sag with age) and are prone to snapping.

This is where the Racingline kit comes in.  Priced below the factory spec refresh price point, you benefit from Racingline's tuning experience, R&D and damper tuning more suitable for UK roads.

After much searching online, I have arrived at RacingLine spring rates being 31n/mm front and 33n/mm rear.  Searching for OEM spring rates came back at 35n/mm front and rear, but I can't be 100% sure on that as the info is extremely hard to track down, and tuners are secretive.  Racingline springs are apparently Eibach sourced, but again, who knows.  The dampers I have no idea, but are a tri-valve design, which allows the damper to 'blow off' excess pressure on fast damper movements, which improves ride quality.  It's the same principal as Ohlins DFV (Dual flow valve) and Koni's FSD (Frequency Selective Damping).  I could go into a massive missive about damper valving, but I won't because it will send you all to sleep!

Suffice to say, springs hold the car up and the dampers do the damping.  In other words, matching a rock hard damper to a soggy spring is going to be sh1t, and ditto a crazy spring rate on a damper that can't control it.  It's not easy getting this stuff right for 99% of people, near on impossible in fact.

Oh go on then, here's a damper 101.....the only 3 things you need to care about, the rest is marketing bollocks:-

1) Slow speed compression - This is brake dive, initial turn, straight line stability, or any situation where the piston movement is slow.

2) High speed compression - This is sudden impacts like pot holes, sharp bumps, dropping off kerbs, sudden direction changes or any situation where the piston movement is fast. 

3) Rebound - This is the wheel being pushed down again by the spring after the compression phase of hitting a bump, and is the adjustment you will most commonly see on adjustable kits.  Dialling in rebound gives the car that hunkered down feeling, but too much reduces grip.  Too much of all 3 reduces grip, so it's an experimentation thing.

These 3 parameters are chosen for us in fixed suspensions.  With aftermarket adjustable kits, you get 1 way, 2 way, 3 way and 4 way adjustments.  The 'Way' relates to which of those 3 damper behaviours you can adjust.  Some sneak in height adjustment as the 4th way, which is not a damping function!

Some kits tie together the low speed compression and rebound into 1 adjustment (Ohlins, Bilstein B16, Gaz Gold...I think) whereas some will allow you to adjust them independently of each other (KW V3, KW Clubsport, Bilstein Clubsport, AST etc).   The reason they tie both into 1 is because....no offence....you kind of need to know what you're doing with this stuff, otherwise you can end up in a hedge backwards.  Same with anti-roll bar mismatching, but that's for a different thread  :smiley:

If you know what you want and understand suspension, then 2 or 3 way adjustable kits are perfect, but most people are faced with knowing what they want the car to do, but don't know how to achieve it.  For example, does your car dive heavily on hard braking and is crashy over bumps?  To tune that out, you need to adjust both the low and high speed compression, but you have to pay £1000s for that privilege.  It's like F1 drivers.  They don't necessarily understand the tech, but they are intimate with the car.  They feed back their thoughts to the engineers and they tweak it accordingly. We don't have that luxury.

Anyway.....this is getting too long winded....it's not an easy subject to condense into a couple of paragraphs and that's only scratched the surface, but in my opinion RacingLine have done a cracking job with this kit at the price point.

Yawn, show us the before and after pics, I only care about stance

I don't have many pics of my car, but here it is on the standard suspension when I bagged her 3 years ago.  Not exactly Range Rover ride height out of the box, but perhaps could do with trimming down a little.







I fitted Passat alloy hubs and wishbones at the same time, but they are out of scope for this review  :smiley:  But you get a shiney black struts and shiney blue springs....the usual fare.  MK5 suspension is dead easy to fit. A ton of info on the net about it.



And the subtle lowering, approx 20mm apparently.  Looks lower than that to me, but it is what it is.  Apart from a Whiteline ALK and the aforementioned Passat items, it's standard suspension wise.





Yeah yeah but does it ride like a Rolls Royce and corner like McRae's Subaru?

No, on both counts.  What it does do though is massively improve both.  I can't begin to tell you how smooth it is after the harsh OEM setup.  On a favourite B road with the stock suspension, my confidence limit was 55-60 mph before it all started getting a bit floaty and wobbly.  Frustrating because I knew the chassis is capable of a lot more.  With the Racingline setup I can hit 80mph with ease and could probably push it a little more, such is it's competence at dealing with rough surfaces.  And as said earlier, it's that compliance that facilitates this.  Nobody likes to head butt the headlining or fall out of their seat from rock hard suspension.

It's so smooth on rough surfaces that you think it can't possibly deliver in the corners as well, but it does!  Those progressive springs coming into play when the car loads up the outer wheels.  It's not an easy thing to pull off, but they have.....for £500!

So in summary, way better ride quality, better cornering and subtle lowering, job done  :happy2:

You've painted a picture of perfection, I'm calling BS, what are the downsides?

Well there's always a but isn't there, and to be honest that but only happens when you really push it.  I've had front wheel arch scuffing a few times (standard wheels and geometry) and when you really give it death in the corners, bumpy ones especially, the unpredictable nature of progressive springs rears it's ugly head.  More negative camber and / or stiffer ARBs will dial out the scuffing.....but I'm not personally a fan of bigger ARBs.  The factory ones are hollow and of an appropriate size for a road car, so I'm not in a hurry to change them.

For 90% of people this kit is perfect, order it now. 

For those wanting absolute control on the limit, I suggest at least double the spring rates minimum, and very decent dampers to match  :smiley:

For the money, I give this kit 8/10  :happy2:  Sorry if the review was long winded and dull, but it was many many words to say it's a fantastic kit.



« Last Edit: August 05, 2017, 10:50:52 pm by Pudding »


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Offline Octoparrot

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Re: VW RacingLine Springs+Dampers kit
« Reply #1 on: August 06, 2017, 11:36:15 am »
Nice review, should help a lot of people.   :happy2:

Offline prp74

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Re: VW RacingLine Springs+Dampers kit
« Reply #2 on: August 06, 2017, 09:09:34 pm »
Thanks for the review. My GTI is approaching 110k and it needs a suspension overhaul. This may be the perfect package.

Living in London there are so many speed bumps and pot holes. Would this set up still be ok as I had some Eibach springs and hated the ride so went back to stock.
« Last Edit: August 07, 2017, 09:38:31 am by prp74 »
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Offline pudding

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Re: VW RacingLine Springs+Dampers kit
« Reply #3 on: August 07, 2017, 09:52:39 am »
Thanks for the review. My GTI is approaching 110k and it needs a suspension overhaul. This may be the perfect package.

Living in London there are so many speed bumps and pot holes. Would this set up still be ok as I had some Eibach springs and hated the ride so went back to stock.

I haven't driven in London for years but I think this kit would suit you.  Just need to be mindful of the lowering and the vicious speed humps part of London have!


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Offline prp74

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Re: VW RacingLine Springs+Dampers kit
« Reply #4 on: August 07, 2017, 11:13:48 am »
Thanks pudding. Going to have a look into this. The car is due a service in Sep, so will speak to AKS about this.

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Offline dronners

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Re: VW RacingLine Springs+Dampers kit
« Reply #5 on: August 08, 2017, 10:00:27 pm »
completely agree with your review. ive had mine on maybe 6 months now..  certainly not the most hardcore out there by any means but perfect for a daily..  also FYI you'll probably get rid of the scuffing by removing the top arch liner screw and pushing the liner under the lip..  worked for me


Offline chrism3

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Re: VW RacingLine Springs+Dampers kit
« Reply #6 on: August 09, 2017, 12:55:05 pm »
I just put these on a 78k car and can confirm everything in this report. Mine have barely done 50 miles yet so more to come when bed in :)

Offline pudding

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Re: VW RacingLine Springs+Dampers kit
« Reply #7 on: August 10, 2017, 11:58:29 am »
I'm glad others are feeling suitably soothed by this kit  :smiley:

What I like is the speedy response of the dampers.   That issue where the front axle hits a bump and is still recovering when the rear axle hits it, which causes a nasty shudder/unsettled feeling in the whole chassis.   The OEM setup was terrible for that, and it's vastly improved with this kit.

That behavior is also a trait of short wheelbase cars, so Ford have developed a system for their adaptive damper cars which analyses the front axle's damper behaviour over bumps, and then commands the rear dampers to adjust themselves accordingly to get rid of that shuddering.  Clever stuff!


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Offline pixel87

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Re: VW RacingLine Springs+Dampers kit
« Reply #8 on: December 27, 2017, 02:03:57 pm »
Hey Pudding,

How are you finding the springs and dampers?

I feel my suspension needs an overhaul and have been contemplating this kit. Did you update your top mounts and spring pads in the rear?

Sent from my MI PAD 3 using Tapatalk


Offline pudding

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Re: VW RacingLine Springs+Dampers kit
« Reply #9 on: December 30, 2017, 02:45:24 pm »
Hi mate

I upgraded to a Ohlins coilovers because I found the VWR kit to be a bit on the soft side for my tastes.  Brilliant on the daily grind, but when pushing the car hard into bumpy corners, I was getting some arch contact.  For <£600, there is very little to complain about tbh mate.

Yep I replaced all of the top mounts and rubber consumables.  It makes no sense to fit brand new suspension to old parts  :happy2:


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Offline dubber

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Re: VW RacingLine Springs+Dampers kit
« Reply #10 on: January 21, 2019, 10:23:40 pm »
Thanks for posting this review, got a set of these fitted today and your description is spot on  :happy2:

Offline pudding

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Re: VW RacingLine Springs+Dampers kit
« Reply #11 on: January 29, 2019, 12:16:31 pm »
No probs.  Out of interest, could you measure the ride height for us as it's been a bone of contention for a while  :grin:

Floor to arch (using the wheel's centre cap as a centre line) is 670mm stock all round, so this kit should drop it to 645 - 650mm in theory.





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Offline colesey

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Re: VW RacingLine Springs+Dampers kit
« Reply #12 on: January 29, 2019, 05:37:11 pm »
We did this several months ago Kev. There was @27mm drop at front and 20mm at rear.

Offline mcblfc88

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Re: VW RacingLine Springs+Dampers kit
« Reply #13 on: April 11, 2019, 11:56:42 am »
Torn between this kit, the Bilstein B12, ST and H&R..... decisions decisions