Scottish Elises

A wee testimonial for the team at Bilstein UK and their top notch service.

One of my S3 LSS dampers was leaking and the others were pretty tired. New ones are £600 a corner I’m told. And on backorder anyway. Nitrons not much different AND I don’t like the idea of those in any case.

Contacted David Masters at Bilstein UK via this page:

https://www.bilstein-shocks.co.uk/pages ... ld-service

…and he said no problem, approx 2 weeks turnaround.

So I dispatched these …



… and got these back today…



Around £180 per corner including fresh springs. Delighted

Only have to fit them now . And set the ride heights.

But hopefully this is of use to others with tired Bilsteins. Prob cheaper if you have standard rather than LSS too.

They have done a cracking job! Well done Bilstein!

I have used them a couple of times.
Have always been brilliant

Impressed so far. Comms a little light and maybe had to chase a touch to ensure they were complete line with Bilstein target of 2 weeks. But so refreshing to get direct customer contact with a direct phone line and couple of human-written (not AI / chatbot) emails.

Re-fitting starts in 5 mins

Well they’re all back on the car. Just the undertray to refit and then a shakedown drive. Will I notice anything different? Who knows.

But hopefully they won’t be leaking like before, at least.

Shakedown successful.

Noises what noises. Bloody silent!

Reminded that like many car bits, these wear gradually and you don’t actually realise how wrecked they are until you refresh.

A whole orchestra of “Elise noises” has disappeared. Serene.

Oh and the dampers ride great.

Shug reminded me (too late ) to torque them up with wishbones set close to normal ride height

So another round of jacking up, wheels off etc. Sigh. But on the bright side, this also let me reset the ride heights. Which were a bit jaunty initially !!

Can’t get the front as low as I’d like - platforms now at top of tubes - but it’s got some rake … it’ll do.

Our late dear friend Lawrence will be chuckling at my ineptitude and muttering about the importance of corner weighting it properly. But that’s def a bridge too far for now. It’s time to go drive it before winter sets in …

Thanks for reading.

…and do the geo if the ride height is in any way different.

alicrozier wrote:…and do the geo if the ride height is in any way different.

Yeah had that on my mind. Thankfully it’s not that far off but car’s in for service in November so might ask.

Good to see - I got a quite recently as ScottA got an excellent service from them a couple of years back too. I have new OEM rears to go on so it would be fronts only for me.

They look brand new - are there any signs they were your originals ?

I scratched my initials on them

Looking good.


Steve