I fitted this kit around 1500 miles ago, travelling up and down the country, so I now feel ready to offer some feedback on it.
What is RacingLine and where are these springs and dampers you speak of?RacingLine, formerly known as VW Racing, are an independent tuning company not affiliated with VW in the same way AMG is to Mercedes, but specialise in VW and have years of experience of tuning them for racing and fast road applications. In short, they know the cars damn well and know what works and what doesn't
Trawl the forum and you will see many comments about VWR/RacingLine rebadging existing products as their own, and adding a hefty premium on top. We shall gloss over that as it's not relevant for the sake of this review and shouldn't cloud your judgement.
So here is the kit in question, and in my opinion extremely good value for those looking to refresh their ageing GTI and inject some life back into it -
https://www.awesomegti.com/shop-by-car/volkswagen/golf-mk5/racingline-performance-spring-and-damper-kit-golf-mk5/The stock suspension whilst surprisingly competent in the corners for a GTI (which lost it's way with the MK3/MK4), is crashy and unforgiving on road surfaces most modern cars don't even notice. The Germans have the luxury of decent road surfaces on the majority of their road infrastructure, but we don't. The quandary we all face at 100K miles is what to replace the tired suspension with. I'm sure a complete overhaul of all of the OEM spec stuff would feel pretty good, but it's expensive, and you're not really upgrading/improving the situation in the long term. The OEM Sachs dampers are reasonable at £60ish each, but the springs are silly money (and they sag with age) and are prone to snapping.
This is where the Racingline kit comes in. Priced below the factory spec refresh price point, you benefit from Racingline's tuning experience, R&D and damper tuning more suitable for UK roads.
After much searching online, I have arrived at RacingLine spring rates being 31n/mm front and 33n/mm rear. Searching for OEM spring rates came back at 35n/mm front and rear, but I can't be 100% sure on that as the info is extremely hard to track down, and tuners are secretive. Racingline springs are apparently Eibach sourced, but again, who knows. The dampers I have no idea, but are a tri-valve design, which allows the damper to 'blow off' excess pressure on fast damper movements, which improves ride quality. It's the same principal as Ohlins DFV (Dual flow valve) and Koni's FSD (Frequency Selective Damping). I could go into a massive missive about damper valving, but I won't because it will send you all to sleep!
Suffice to say, springs hold the car up and the dampers do the damping. In other words, matching a rock hard damper to a soggy spring is going to be sh1t, and ditto a crazy spring rate on a damper that can't control it. It's not easy getting this stuff right for 99% of people, near on impossible in fact.
Oh go on then, here's a damper 101.....the only 3 things you need to care about, the rest is marketing bollocks:-
1) Slow speed compression - This is brake dive, initial turn, straight line stability, or any situation where the piston movement is slow.
2) High speed compression - This is sudden impacts like pot holes, sharp bumps, dropping off kerbs, sudden direction changes or any situation where the piston movement is fast.
3) Rebound - This is the wheel being pushed down again by the spring after the compression phase of hitting a bump, and is the adjustment you will most commonly see on adjustable kits. Dialling in rebound gives the car that hunkered down feeling, but too much reduces grip. Too much of all 3 reduces grip, so it's an experimentation thing.
These 3 parameters are chosen for us in fixed suspensions. With aftermarket adjustable kits, you get 1 way, 2 way, 3 way and 4 way adjustments. The 'Way' relates to which of those 3 damper behaviours you can adjust. Some sneak in height adjustment as the 4th way, which is not a damping function!
Some kits tie together the low speed compression and rebound into 1 adjustment (Ohlins, Bilstein B16, Gaz Gold...I think) whereas some will allow you to adjust them independently of each other (KW V3, KW Clubsport, Bilstein Clubsport, AST etc). The reason they tie both into 1 is because....no offence....you kind of need to know what you're doing with this stuff, otherwise you can end up in a hedge backwards. Same with anti-roll bar mismatching, but that's for a different thread
If you know what you want and understand suspension, then 2 or 3 way adjustable kits are perfect, but most people are faced with knowing what they want the car to do, but don't know how to achieve it. For example, does your car dive heavily on hard braking and is crashy over bumps? To tune that out, you need to adjust both the low and high speed compression, but you have to pay £1000s for that privilege. It's like F1 drivers. They don't necessarily understand the tech, but they are intimate with the car. They feed back their thoughts to the engineers and they tweak it accordingly. We don't have that luxury.
Anyway.....this is getting too long winded....it's not an easy subject to condense into a couple of paragraphs and that's only scratched the surface, but in my opinion RacingLine have done a cracking job with this kit at the price point.
Yawn, show us the before and after pics, I only care about stanceI don't have many pics of my car, but here it is on the standard suspension when I bagged her 3 years ago. Not exactly Range Rover ride height out of the box, but perhaps could do with trimming down a little.
I fitted Passat alloy hubs and wishbones at the same time, but they are out of scope for this review
But you get a shiney black struts and shiney blue springs....the usual fare. MK5 suspension is dead easy to fit. A ton of info on the net about it.
And the subtle lowering, approx 20mm apparently. Looks lower than that to me, but it is what it is. Apart from a Whiteline ALK and the aforementioned Passat items, it's standard suspension wise.
Yeah yeah but does it ride like a Rolls Royce and corner like McRae's Subaru?No, on both counts. What it does do though is massively improve both. I can't begin to tell you how smooth it is after the harsh OEM setup. On a favourite B road with the stock suspension, my confidence limit was 55-60 mph before it all started getting a bit floaty and wobbly. Frustrating because I knew the chassis is capable of a lot more. With the Racingline setup I can hit 80mph with ease and could probably push it a little more, such is it's competence at dealing with rough surfaces. And as said earlier, it's that compliance that facilitates this. Nobody likes to head butt the headlining or fall out of their seat from rock hard suspension.
It's so smooth on rough surfaces that you think it can't possibly deliver in the corners as well, but it does! Those progressive springs coming into play when the car loads up the outer wheels. It's not an easy thing to pull off, but they have.....for £500!
So in summary, way better ride quality, better cornering and subtle lowering, job done
You've painted a picture of perfection, I'm calling BS, what are the downsides?Well there's always a but isn't there, and to be honest that but only happens when you really push it. I've had front wheel arch scuffing a few times (standard wheels and geometry) and when you really give it death in the corners, bumpy ones especially, the unpredictable nature of progressive springs rears it's ugly head. More negative camber and / or stiffer ARBs will dial out the scuffing.....but I'm not personally a fan of bigger ARBs. The factory ones are hollow and of an appropriate size for a road car, so I'm not in a hurry to change them.
For 90% of people this kit is perfect, order it now.
For those wanting absolute control on the limit, I suggest at least double the spring rates minimum, and very decent dampers to match
For the money, I give this kit 8/10
Sorry if the review was long winded and dull, but it was many many words to say it's a fantastic kit.
