Mine is also on 110K and over the weekend I fitted:
VW Racingline spring & damper kit.
Passat B6 alloy hubs
Passat B6 alloy wishbones with my existing WALK
Passat B6 ball joints
New front top mounts & bearings
New upper and lower rear spring rubber pads
New rear top mounts and bump stops
New front wheel bearings
All stretch bolts replaced
4 wheel alignment
That lot has completely transformed the car. Everything about the way the car drives is markedly better, including the ride quality. The lowering is very mild compared to most kits, but the taller Passat Ball joints and the Passat hubs correct the roll center back to where it should be.
I am normally very cynical about aftermarket stuff but I am completely blown away by the improvements
sounds like you have a really good setup, similar to what i'm aiming for!
I was going to go for the VWR kit but chose the ST in the end as it was the same drop and sounded very similar but was cheaper and available on 0% , hopefully it will be as good although there isnt a huge amount of info around on the ST kit.
I've only recently read about using the B6 arms to save unsprung weight otherwise i would have gone for those too, whats the advantages of the B6 ball joints?
The arms only save 1kg mate. It's the hubs (aka bearing housings) that shave off the most weight, but I chose to keep everything Passat and therefore consistent as all those bits were designed to work with each other
The advantage of the B6 ball joints you ask? It all hinges around roll center and bump steer. Google those and see if they make any sense to you! It's pretty heavy reading
This is one of the better diagrams I've seen. The "Roll center adjusters" being the Passat ball joints on our Golfs. The idea is to keep points A & B as close to each other as possible, which reduces the car's tendency to lean into corners.
What I don't think many people realise is lowering a car and doing nothing else actually makes it roll more, not less. Sounds counter intuitive right? Stiffer arbs or springs are often used to counter act it, but a better way is to move the wishbone angles back to factory, which is what roll center correction is all about....and is what the Passat BJs do
This is why the sensible suspension kits only lower a very small amount as to not fck up the roll center. You then don't need as stiff a spring, or big fat heavy ARBs either
Bump steer is when the steering wheel snatches left / right uncontrollably when accelerating hard over bumps, or during turns over bumps (not to be confused with torque steer). The wishbones and tie rods follow an arc, and on lowered cars, the arc can run out of travel and the wishbone to tie rod angles then get skewed. As the hub rises into the wheel arch over a bump, the tie rod has no arc left and gets forced back into the steering rack, which the driver feels as a twitch in the wheel. Nasty stuff. Again, Mr Passat Ball Joint and sensible lowering heights fix that for you
At the end of the day, that's all the lovely theory, but if the car doesn't do anything horrible on the road after you've lowered it, you don't need to worry too much. I'm just ultra OCD about that stuff!