RE: Bilstein sports & S4 pics

[Henry Harper <hah@srv.net>]

> I'm trying to track down some Bilstein sports for a '93 S4 the part #'s that
> I have found so far are
>
> P36-0369 and,
> B46-2066
>
> Do these jive with anyone else's research?  What are the differences between
> standard and sport model?
>  Don't the sports have a much larger rod diameter? Is the shaft shorter to
> accommodate lowering springs or will I be ok with stock springs?
>

According to Bilstein of Deutschland's web site, surely the ultimate authority, 
these are the "sprint" applications for lowering springs (which you have), 
whereas the "sport" is for non-lowering springs. These same two applications 
are listed there (http://www.bilstein.de choose UK-English not US-English) for 
almost every large quattro, sedan or wagon, type 44 until new A6/A8. The 
"sport" P36-0370 (f) and B45-2065 (r) units fit my '91 200q w/stock springs 
without problems and work very well.

The confusing part is that Bilsteins appear to be marketed in this country as 
either "HD" or "Sport" instead of the "Sport" and "Sprint" labels used by BofD. 
One branch of conventional wisdom does hold, for VW applications anyway, that 
the US-sports/BofD-sprints do have shorter and thicker shafts for lowering 
springs. Another branch says sports are (just?) valved stiffer.

So being confused, I bought "sports" (US-sports) for my GTI with stock springs 
(stock GTI springs, as opposed to stock Golf springs). I was pretty happy with 
them until I tried to drive some bumpy corners at the same speed as I had 
recently done in my quattro, and the GTI was a little squirrely in a manner 
perhaps consistent with not enough shock travel. Quattro was very smooth.

My advice would be to disregard the "sport"-type word-labels and stick with 
part numbers and for-lowering-springs/not-for-lowering-springs 
characterizations. Helpfully, Bilstein appears to only make the two 
applications for Audis, lowering/non-lowering, but about four for some other 
cars (like VW) including "rally" and "race" versions.

> Finally what is a good price and from where?
>

For my not-for-lowering-springs units I found a good price of $437 for all four 
shipped from RD Enterprises (http://www.shox.com). Might expect 
for-lowering-springs ones to be a bit more, but RD was significantly under 
Ivor's quote. You also might call Sport Wheels, they claim to have custom 
valving going on. Of course, if you can specify what valving you want Bilstein 
of America will revalve for $50 per shock anyway. BofA "technical" seems to 
pretty useless as far as application data, though. "Um, we don't show anything 
for that car?"

> Thanks,
> Frank--
>
> PS. If you'd like to see pics of my S4 see http://www.audi-s-cars.com/frank
>

Yow.

HTH
Henry Harper
http://www.srv.net/~hah
1991 200 quattro, 89k, now the daily driver
1988 GTI 16v, 179k, dead tranny