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The large and clearly marked rear shock adjustment knobs are located near the top mount. They are easy to access when the car is lifted up and the wheels droop down. Adjustments are easy to make and keep track of with this system.
Here you can see the substantial difference in length between the stock front strut assembly and the Bilstein Clubsport inverted monotube. The Bilstein Clubsport assembly features a high quality linear spring and helper spring to keep everything under tension at full extension. Bilstein welds brackets to the shock body for any of the factory mounting requirements like the sway bar tab visible on the left side of the shock body.
This is an upward looking view of the front strut mounting location. The Bilstein Clubsport suspension includes adjustable camber plates up top and the factory mounting location on the Golf R does not have an opening that is large enough to allow access to the hardware on the upper mounting plate. We decided to remedy the situation by opening up the hole large enough that we could easily access the adjustment on the upper mounting plates.
We initially tried to use a hole saw to open up this area, but we quickly learned how hard the steel Volkswagen uses on this car is. Modern cars are using harder steel in the body construction to improve rigidity and crash performance. Volkswagen is using something pretty tough here, because the hole saw barely scratched the surface. A high speed cut off wheel had to be used to tackle the job. Thankfully, Howard was up to the task and he did an excellent job. Now we have full access to the upper camber adjustment plates which we will be using to get some much needed negative camber up front.
The suspension install went very well, and we expected nothing less from this high end Bilstein Clubsport setup. The quality and refinement of this kit is really impressive, and we are excited to get this thing set up and on the track.
