89 Helios 16V Jetta Suspension

89 Helios 16V Jetta Suspension

Here are a few pics of the Bilstein / Neuspeed suspension upgrade.

Without Bilstein/Neuspeed
So sorry about picture quality.

With Bilstein/Neuspeed
Again due to the picture quality the difference is not so apparent. Also this Jetta has a taller rear tire. Will go back to the stock tire size 195/50/15 when we get a chance.
There is a vast improvement in the performance of the car including braking and acceleration. This jetta drives awesome, unbelievable driving experience, from here on it's only going to get better.
Front tire size is 195/50/15
Rear tire size is 205/45/15

We were to install a Neuspeed front tie bar but this Helios came factory equipped with ABS brakes and the wheel sensor cables are mounted on the strut housings. There is a lug for the mountings that we have to cut off. At this time we are still trying to come up with the best way to do this without grinding away at the shock tower.

07-10-08
Update after driving our GLI for a little while now we like the fact that we get no rubbing or scraping on driveways or ramps or from the tires.
We are however true enthusiasts and will be lowering the GLI more we are trying to acheive that awesome profile the MKII 's are known for.

07-19-08

Here are the latest pics. Notice the GLI is now low. It took us a while but we got it right after alot of time and work invested. But the result was well worth it. We also installed the front Neuspeed tie-bar more pics tomarrow. As of now the car handles amazing the extra drop both front and rear gave the car that race car like handling. This GLI is a joy to drive. We get no rub front or rear and the car rides great. We still need to add the front 25mm adj. Neuspeed sway bar and a Eurosport lower tie-bar. For the rear a Neuspeed 28mm adj. sway bar and a rear triangulated Neuspeed tie-bar.

For the front we had to cut 2 3/4 coils off the Neuspeed sport springs Pt# 55.10.12 to get the desired height. We do not recommend this due to the fact that the spring was too short and ended up being loose after assembling the Bilstein strut Pt# V36.0366. Not good if our GLI ever unloads the front end while driving the spring could come back down in the wrong position. The most you can cut without this happening is somewhere between two coils and 2 3/4 coils. After cutting two coils off the spring it will still be held securely after assembling the strut but not at 2 3/4. For now we havent experienced any problems. One thing if you do cut your springs two coils you do not need a spring compressor, it makes the job much easier.

At the rear we set the Bilstein shocks Pt# B36.2246 to the lowest setting.

If we were to do it again we would try to determing exactly how close we could get to cutting 2 3/4 so we don't have a loose spring then use a lowering top spring cap to get that lowered height because at 2 coils cut, it was a tad bit to high.

Stay tuned tomarrow we will be doing the crystal smoke tail lights and a few other mods.

Here are some pics for now.

Keep in mind that the rear tires are still the 205's which are taller than the front 195's. This will change hopefully next week to level out the car some, we don't like that much rake.

One last thing do not buy the Dunlop Direzza's after our suspension upgrade you can feel they lack sidewall support while in a tight turn. We will be getting some Bridgstone's for the rear, later we will get the fronts after we wear these Dunlops out.

Here are the pics of the Neuspeed front Tie-bar installation. With each mod we do, we have felt a positive change to the GLI and the Tie-bar was no exception. Definately stiffened up the front end.

Notice how we mounted the ABS sensor. We found the best way to remove the ABS mounting lugs was to twist them off with a pair of channel locks. This provides the best way to remove the spot welded lugs without grinding or tearing up the strut tower at all.

As you can see we used stainless steel bolts, washers bottom and top with locknuts to mount the Tie-bar. Please do not use the nutserts Neuspeed and most other Tie-bar manufactures include with their Tie-bar. Using these nutserts is the worst thing you can do, after a while of use the nutserts rub in their hole and make it bigger, your Tie-bar begins to move around and is far less effective. Also by mounting the bolts upside down this provided a convienient place to mount our ABS sensor wires. The bracket simply went on the bolt and we used a nut to secure it hand tight, all in the stock location, a very factory install.