Neuspeed rear anti roll bar and neuspeed drop links

[MAT ED30]

I bought my neuspeed rear arb from Awesome last year and and it was great for about 6k miles until one day i has a lot of noise coming from the rear end  , so a trip to the dealer showed it was down to the arb putting to much stress on the oe droplinks and sending noise up the rear shocks  .
I had Vw take the Neuspeed arb off and i put the stock one back on to find out all the noise had gone  , i phoned Andy at awesome to let him know the problem and he said bring the arb in for him to look at to see if it was bent or out of line.I took it over and Andy, me and Jim had a look and it looked fine  so after having a chat i asked jim what arbs are on there mk5 and he said the same as yours  so i said lets have a look at the droplinks on yours to see how much pressure they are under and after looking he said to me he thought they would not last long if on the hard setting like mine are  so he very kindly asked me to try the new neuspeed droplinks to see if this is the prob and the cure
some quick pics of the install
VW droplinks and stock arb


unbolt the stock arb clamps 2 bolt per clamp

and undo the droplinks on the ard and on the arm

and then slide the arb out

you need to keep the arb clamp bolts and the droplink nuts and change the clamp over to the neuspeed arb and put lots of grease on the new poly bushes

and then put the bar back on

and then fit these bad boys   


the little spacers slide on the bolts 1 on the the top between the bolt and the arm and the bottom one goes between the arb and the droplink 

they have been on 2 days now and they have stopped all noise and have made the back stiffer on the corners 

big thanks to awesome for sorting these out for me (free) as they need to know if there is a problem with the arbs and i will be keeping an eye on them over the next few months
 

[matt a]

Nice looking drop links. 

[Top Cat]

Great write-up Mat. 

[john_o]

circlip retained bearing ARB links  awesome kit too nice to go under the car 
nice write up Matt  and an interesting solution to a wierd problem

[MAT ED30]

circlip retained bearing ARB links  awesome kit too nice to go under the car 
nice write up Matt  and an interesting solution to a wierd problem

they are as nice as the walk kit 

[SteveP]

Very good write up Mat, thanks for taking the time to do this 

[JPC]

mat, whats the pros/cons to this kit as a pose to getting the eibach? im thinking of getting eibach front and back at awesome on wednesday

[MAT ED30]

mat, whats the pros/cons to this kit as a pose to getting the eibach? im thinking of getting eibach front and back at awesome on wednesday

i think the neuspeed one is thicker and is adjustable ie 2 settings ie normal road use or race setup so stiffer  if you are doing the back i would get the droplinks they are stunning bits of kit 

[RedRobin]

....

I'm not convinced about the Neuspeed droplinks - They certainly look strong but VWR have done goodness knows how many hard racing miles on the oem droplinks on lots of VW cars and never had a problem. With V3 coilovers I'm not sure I need a stiffer rear end.

I'm just not very confident about Neuspeed products - They seem to be good at producing good-looking gear that's not needed - I'm particularly referring to that rear triple boot strut thingy. The Turbo Discharge and Charge pipes I bought by them, following Awesome's advice, have had no measurable performance gains.

Just my current opinion.

[MAT ED30]

the thing with vwr is most of there cars are on the track and are very well looked after but mine has done 10k on the neuspeed arb and it was just too much for the vw droplinks on hard setting  most companies bring out lots of cheap crap that they claim do things that they dont and u need to make your own mind up as to what is good for u. I am more than happy with neuspeed and Awesome gti for there help with the problem and will test these out over the next year on the road and on the track so they will get some stick and if they are going to brake i am sure i will find out 

[JPC]

that boot strut did completely send me running from neuspeed stuff to be honest, but im still keeping an open mind. ill speak to awesome tomorrow, see what the say and de-cipher the sales pitch

[gazbutS3]

alot of its down to cost also Jay, if I remember correctly the front and rear eibach roll bars are not much more than 1 neuspeed roll bar, they may be better but not twice as good

[RedRobin]

the thing with vwr is most of there cars are on the track and are very well looked after but mine has done 10k on the neuspeed arb and it was just too much for the vw droplinks on hard setting  most companies bring out lots of cheap crap that they claim do things that they dont and u need to make your own mind up as to what is good for u. I am more than happy with neuspeed and Awesome gti for there help with the problem and will test these out over the next year on the road and on the track so they will get some stick and if they are going to brake i am sure i will find out 

....True, and you are right to do what you're doing. Being "very well looked after" means that everything is regularly inspected and serviced as appropriate, so they'd spot a droplink problem.

I've had Eibach (non-adjustable) ARB's on for about 50k miles and had to regrease the bushes and replace a broken mount, but no probs with my oem droplinks.
 

[RedRobin]

alot of its down to cost also Jay, if I remember correctly the front and rear eibach roll bars are not much more than 1 neuspeed roll bar, they may be better but not twice as good

....And the Eibach ARB's aren't so inferior that they warranted changing to match my new VWR suspension.

[gazbutS3]

the Eibachs do have two settings don't they, I'm sure they had 2 sets of mounting holes for the drop links when I had them on the ED30, I could be wrong though