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Sport Suspension option bits?

11K views 13 replies 8 participants last post by  Techvet 
#1 ·
Does anyone know what the sport suspension included? It's been packaged in different ways over the years. I think we only got a sport model the first year in the US.

The option included 18" wheels, but according the UK brochure, the car did not ride any lower. So, with a 1" increase in wheel size, the springs may be slightly more compact. I'm guessing the package could have also included larger sway and roll bars, different shocks, and different springs.

I saw one car with it, and I liked it. It didn't look odd. My concern about not going the OEM route is that the Eos can easily look like an elephant on roller skates.
 
#2 ·
I looked into this back when we bought our '09 Eos, as I had heard rumors of a "sport" suspension option. It wasn't mentioned in the brochure, and I couldn't find a car on a lot with this option. Salesmen didn't know much about it.

After the fact I looked around OEM parts listings such as on 1stVWParts, and if remember correctly for '09, the main differences in the "sport" suspension package were the shocks/struts and the sway bars. Bump stops may vary, as well as the sway bar brackets. The sway bars were slightly thicker, maybe 1 or 2mm. Presumably the shocks/struts were valved differently for the sport. Springs were the same. This of course is for the U.S. market; I have no idea about the rest of the world.

You could probably figure out what parts you needed to swap out, and do it at a convenient time, say, when you needed to replace shocks/struts anyway.

Our Eos handles quite well and has very low miles, so I haven't felt the burning desire to modify the suspension (nor would my wife cotton to the car riding really stiff!)
 
#4 ·
Thanks for the info. I think front and rear sway bars might do the trick.
That would definitely be a good place to start.

I have been considering firmer shocks for mine, it would help to reduce the weight shift to the rear under hard acceleration and therefore help keep traction on the front wheels. Would love to lower it a touch but I have to enter my driveway at an angle as it is to stop the exhaust tips scraping!

Keep us updated if you do change the swaybars, will be interesting to see what difference it makes. :)

Adam
 
#8 ·
I've never really understood what exactly sway bars do...... can you educate me?
 
#9 ·
No problem! Sway bars increase a car's roll stiffness, so it doesn't lean as much in turns. A sway bar is basically a big U-shaped spring that attaches one wheel/axle end to the other side's wheel/axle end. When one side of the car is loaded during a turn, some of that load gets transferred to the other side, preventing the car from rolling over as much. In addition to the body lean aspects, sway bars also affect handling, by altering understeer/oversteer.

You'd initially think, cool, I'll put really, really fat sway bars on! Problem #1 is that they also transmit bumps from one side of the car to the other. Problem #2 is that your car won't give you as much of a warning (i.e., by rolling over precariously) that you're reaching its handling limits in a turn.

Sway bars have no affect on a car's fore/aft stiffness, so dive under braking and squat under acceleration aren't changed by sway bars.
 
#10 ·
Hi Lucid,

In the UK I believe the Sports chassis was lowered by 15mm from standard on the Mk1 EOS.

I wondered what you meant by Sway Bar - I guess a sway bar in the US is what we call an Anti Roll Bar in the UK. I had an uprated one (twice as stiff as standard) fitted to the front of my old S1 Elise and that was really effective on that chassis. However, IMO it would probably ruin the pleasently fluid and un-twitchy feel of my V6 EOS.

FYI: there is a great site for UK drivers - howmanyleft.co.uk. It tells you how many of a particular make and model car are registered in the UK. You can use it to analyse things like "sports", and interestingly, the majority of UK EOS's have the sports chassis (about 10,000 out of 17,400 and about 90% of the rare V6's). Considering our roads, that's maybe something of a surprise! You could lose my Elise in some of our potholes...
 
#11 ·
I wondered what you meant by Sway Bar - I guess a sway bar in the US is what we call an Anti Roll Bar in the UK. I had an uprated one (twice as stiff as standard) fitted to the front of my old S1 Elise and that was really effective on that chassis. However, IMO it would probably ruin the pleasently fluid and un-twitchy feel of my V6 EOS.
Yep - sway bar = anti-roll bar. Kind of a misnomer, because it prevents sway.;)

I'm not surprised a healthy front bar helped out on an Elise. An Elise is almost the opposite of the Eos: it's mid-engined, RWD, and the weight is rear-biased. The Eos of course is front-engined, FWD, and nose-heavy. The Elise is more likely to oversteer (maybe even surprise you with snap oversteer if you lift the throttle on a turn!), so a stiff front bar would reduce that tendency.
 
#13 ·
good knowledge gents,

i think i may be inadvertently owning a sports suspension set up, i have 18" wheels that i rarely see looking at the US photos, they do sit in the arches a little better to break up the large expanses of bodywork on the Eos, looking to lower mine further for a more coupe look to the err, coupe.
 
#14 ·
My wife and I have a 2014 EOS Komfort on order and we own a 2012 Tiguan SEL that has the sport suspension on it. With regards to the Tig, the sport suspension brings different springs, struts and stabilizer bar (anti-roll bar/sway bar) along with 19" rims/times. It also brings a harsher/stiffer ride. Neither my wife or I mind the stiffer ride, but there is a definite difference between the two suspensions. Now the Sport Suspension on the 2014 EOS only comes if you order the Sport or Executive trims, both of which add a minimum of $2500 to the cost of the car. I was tempted by the Sport trim, but believe it or not, we didn't care for the standard 18" wheels that came with it - just too much of the black-out look for our liking with a white car. If came with the 18" rims of the Executive trim, then we would have seriously considered it. The sport suspension on the Tiguan attracts the interest of a lot of folks who didn't/couldn't get it and many have run the numbers on what it would take to retrofit it and it's not cheap. Just for grins, I spent some time looking at the EOS parts listings and it looks like the springs, struts, strut bumper and the stablizer bar differ depending on if a Sports Suspension is used. As with the Tiguan, the parts aren't cheap (~$600 for the front end alone). If you were doing the work as a part of a standard strut replacement is one thing, but doing it otherwise would be get pricey. Given how we intend to use our EOS, odds are that I'll keep it as is or at least I won't be rushing to change it until I somehow convince ourselves that we don't like the stock Komfort set-up.
 
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