Ray Khan

I drove A4Bunny's car last weekend. She has the recently released Shine racing suspension on her 2000 A4. She does not have the sport package. So 15" wheels with all season tires, stock non sport sways. So the height is going to turn everyone off. The car is about .5" lower than stock non sport. In the front I was getting 4 fingers between the fender and the tire. I didn't "measure" the back, but it looks just like stock. I have no idea what the spring rates are, but they are said to be progressive. My comparison is my car, with the hyperco 450 lb/in front springs and the 500 lb/in rear springs. Sport package front sway bar and Neuspeed rear sway bar on stiff. Right now I have 16" wheels with Dunlop wintersport M2's. We both have bilstein shocks. Of course I drove the car on the streets and didn't really explore the true limits of the suspensions. I also didn't drive the cars back to back and on the same roads. I didn't have my car at the time. So take this with a grain of salt. The Shine suspension did feel better to me in that the car stayed flatter in turns, and also seemed more compliant over the road imperfections. Granted my car is lower and my shocks have about 100k miles on them now as well. One thing noticably better about my car, and I didn't think I was perceptive enough to notice....the turn in on my car was amazing compared to hers. I'm assuming the sway bars are responsible for that. I never thought the sway bar did much to help with body roll, but now I'm noticing how they help with turn in tremendously. So I like the feel of the Shine suspension much better than my own. I hate the height of the Shine suspension tho and I wonder if using the notched bilsteins to lower the car a little bit (although there is no way it could be lowered enough for most people on these boards with just the shocks) if the handling would be sacrificed. I remember talking to Dick Shine years ago when he was doing testing for this suspension how the B5 suspension geometry was not going to work as well lowered like every other suspension product was doing to improve handling. But then again he also told me there was no such thing as progressive springs and his springs are progressive as he says. Actually, I think he meant that the claims of people saying the spring rates change as much as they do in their progressive springs is what he was getting at. Just as no springs are truly linear, none are truly as progressive as some would like us to think. I can't really comment on the true nature of understeer/oversteer dynamics of the cars since I didn't really get to those limits.

Kevin_AKA KevinECM

Those guys were so nice when I went there last yr.