Two must haves on any car of ours are suspension and wheels. I personally hate the way stock wheels sit in and usually the styling is off. I also do not like stock ride height. You should not be able to put your fist inbetween the wheel and fender unless it is a off-road truck. So the first thing to tackle is the suspension. The factory PASM function is nice, but to be honest, I dont feel the need to push a button every time I need improved suspension. Having used many different suspensions on many different cars, the factory PASM just does not do it. This is why like on my last 997 TT, I went with KW V3 Coilovers. However for this go-round, I went with their PASM compatible system.
What this means is KW has built a system that plugs in place to eliminate the PASM fault codes that occur when you disconnect the plugs. Of course your sport features are unchanged and still work the same with the performance of the vehicle. So if you don’t have a PIWIS tool ($70,000+) to go in and deactivate the PASM function for suspension, this is a great option. The KW V3 coilover still provides the independent adjustable rebound and compression to really tune the car into your driving style. KW does provide recommended ride height and adjustment settings for those new to this. However once you set it, you forget. One big advantage of the KW coilovers is their patented bump stop. This material acts like a 3rd spring. So when your cruising the streets, the ride is very comfortable. When you push the car hard in turns, this bump stop reacts and provides you a stiff reactive feeling that road racers and high performance drivers desire. So if you have looked up the KW spring rates and wondered why they are lower then say Bilstein, this is why.
Another great feature of the KW is the relocation of the spring bearing to the bottom of the spring perch. Alot of coilover owners will complain of a binding or creaking noise when turning their steering wheel lock to lock at extremely slow speeds. This is because of using the stock upper bearing. While KW retains the factory strut top, the seat on top of the spring does not use the factory bearing.
In addition to the suspension, we decided to add the Agency Power front and rear sway bars. These sway bars are adjustable 3 ways front and rear. With AWD cars, there is alot of “push” or understeer. To improve the point and go feeling, a stiffer rear sway bar is usually added to the rear to give it a more RWD feeling. Agency Power has built and measured their bars to be 76% more stiffer then stock in the rear and 170% more stiffer in the front on the firm settings, See Here. Typically I like a bit of oversteer so I run the rear sway bar at the stiffest setting and the front in the middle. Because this is a street car, I have opted out of the other Agency Power Suspension parts such as control arms, toe arms, sway bar links, etc. This project is really more about streetable and performance balance for those that push their car not on the tracks.
Lastly none of this is even possible without a proper alignment. Because of how low the car is, putting it on a conventional alignment machine was not possible. So we decided to string up the car here. With some help from the alignment wizard, Betim at BBI Autosport, we set the car perfect with their help. Suggested settings for a great street car and good tire wear are: Max the front camber out and match it to the weaker side as one always has more. Put the front toe at .5mm in per side. The rear give it -1.8 degrees of camber and run 2mm of toe in.
Check out the cool HD KW V3 Porsche 997.2 Turbo S install video we did and pictures below!
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