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Станислав Грязин - Комфортная подвеска в "бюджетке"

Stanislav Grigoryn and Andrei discuss why lifting budget cars for Russian roads ruins handling, and how springs, shocks and ride height affect comfort and stability.

Key Takeaways

  • Lifting a car, even slightly, usually degrades handling and high-speed stability.
  • Stiffer longer springs with cheap shocks do not produce a good ride or handling.
  • Ride height changes alter shock absorber performance, especially rebound and bottoming out.
  • There is no universal best shock absorber; match components to the car and intended use.
  • Experimentation and consulting experienced owners are important before modifying suspension.

What the video covers

  • Host Andrei Krutsko visits former Russian rally champion Stanislav to discuss improving comfort and handling of budget cars (Polo sedan, Solaris, Rapid) popular in Russia and the Customs Union.
  • Stanislav argues that raising a car's ride height, even by a centimeter or two, significantly worsens handling and high-speed stability, calling it the simplest way to ruin a car's handling.
  • Common local tuning of cheap shocks combined with stiffer, longer springs is criticized as producing poor handling despite increased off-road clearance.
  • Spacers and washers used to raise cars like Skoda are discussed as harmful to shock absorber operation, reducing rebound travel and causing wheel hang and rattling.
  • Ride height changes affect shock absorber energy dissipation: more compression travel but less rebound, leading to bottoming out and impacts over bumps.
  • The discussion explains how shock absorbers convert kinetic energy into heat via oil passing through valves, and why damper quality matters.
  • Brands such as Koni and Bilstein are compared based on personal experience, with the conclusion that there is no universal 'good' shock absorber; the choice depends on the car and task.
  • Spring selection is linked to body vibration frequency for passenger comfort, and the speaker recommends experimenting and consulting people who have tried specific setups.
  • Testing methods such as high-speed lane changes between cones are suggested for evaluating handling changes.
  • The conversation concludes that proper tuning should balance comfort, ride reliability and handling, and that lifting a car for road conditions is a compromise rather than a clean solution.

Chapters

  1. 00:00Introduction to Russian car tuning and visiting Stanislav
  2. 01:54Comfort and handling goals for budget cars
  3. 04:18Why raising a car ruins handling
  4. 06:07Spacers, springs and shock absorber operation
  5. 07:50Energy dissipation and bottoming out explained
  6. 10:50Choosing shock absorbers and brands
  7. 16:40Testing setups and personal experience
  8. 32:00Practical solutions for the Rapid owner and conclusions

Answers

Questions about this video

Why does raising a car's ride height hurt its handling?

According to Stanislav, the car is designed around an optimal height for suspension kinematics and articulation. Even raising it by about a centimeter changes geometry and damper behavior, which reduces stability at highway speeds.

Are stiffer springs and cheap shocks a good way to tune budget cars?

The discussion suggests this is a poor approach. Cheap shocks combined with longer, stiffer springs produce harsh, noisy suspension and poor handling, even if the car gains some clearance for off-road use.

Is there a best shock absorber brand for all cars?

No. The speakers stress there is no universal best shock absorber. Brands like Koni and Bilstein have mixed results depending on the vehicle, so owners should research and consult people who have installed them.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00
Speaker A
All right, well, good afternoon, everyone. We are visiting Stanislav. That kind of Russian tuning. I don't understand where it came from, who thought of it, or who needs it. People who say the opposite simply didn't study physics in school. It's a cheap
00:13
Speaker A
way to add a bit of energy capacity and ground clearance to make the car better in that regard. There is visual tuning, I'm very fond of it and I'm a fan of it too. No, it's total garbage. There is
00:25
Speaker A
no such thing, as they say, as tuning that only has pluses. There is always a flip side to the coin. Unshaven. It's fine.
00:31
Speaker A
And I'm the same way. Let's continue. Belarus is mine. Stanislav's. Those who watch my channel regularly already know him very well.
00:47
Speaker A
For those watching for the first time, let me remind you that he is a former Russian rally champion. He has competed many times in Europe and has driven a lot at the Nürburgring. Now, you could say he has raised, or probably already
01:00
Speaker A
raised, two sons. One of them, the eldest, was the Russian rally champion last year, yes.
01:05
Speaker A
There. And Kolya is now racing in the World Rally Championship. That's practically Formula 1 for those who don't know. And Stanislav is a person who has done a lot of motorsport himself, and now he has raised these sons and is, as it were, their mentor,
01:19
Speaker A
you could say, their second race engineer. Well, yes. Stanislav has a very deep experience with cars in general. As for engineering, he understands the mechanics of equipment very well. If anyone saw Stanislav's videos a long time ago, there was a series called "
01:37
Speaker A
Visiting Stas" that he made himself. I tried to make similar videos; Stas and I have already talked about this topic.
01:43
Speaker A
We had about five episodes where we talked over Skype. Today we are talking in person; despite all these quarantines and other adventures, I managed to come to his hospitable home.
01:54
Speaker A
There. And today we will talk about and continue the topic of civilian, more popular cars. Today we will talk about such a topic as increasing the comfort of a car, its ride reliability, and improving its handling, as applied to
02:08
Speaker A
simple, popular budget cars that Russians, Belarusians, and people in the Customs Union generally acquire a lot of—this topic is very widespread.
02:19
Speaker A
Things like Polosedans, Solaris, Rapides, all this equipment that so many people drive. There. And I'll start with a story: a subscriber came to me, a guy who drives a Rapide, and he had, let's say, a number of questions. Well, first and foremost, he
02:37
Speaker A
didn't like how the suspension worked. The suspension in these cars, as you all know, is lifted quite high. It's a way of adapting European cars to Russian realities, fearing that there are tons of potholes and bumps on the
02:50
Speaker A
roads that need to be navigated. For some reason, it's customary to make the suspension very high for this, even in passenger cars; they try to make them into crossovers, with a ground clearance of 180 mm, comparable to SUVs
03:05
Speaker A
. Yeah. And a person asks: "The suspension isn't like that, and I don't like it. It works very harshly, it works noisily, it works uncomfortably." Yeah. And at the same time, at high speeds—at normal highway speeds of about 100 km/h—the car practically
03:18
Speaker A
gets blown off the road. And that is what I wanted to talk about with Stanislav today. Of course, Stanislav has more racing experience as a sports engineer, but the approaches used in motorsport still apply, as physics doesn't change for civilian cars; the
03:36
Speaker A
same laws work in everyday use. So, how do these cars drive on the highway?
03:42
Speaker A
Stanislav, in your opinion, why is it that a car like the Golf—a wonderful European vehicle that won all sorts of awards and had no complaints about its suspension—suddenly gets a huge number of complaints as soon as it arrives in Russia and gets adapted for
04:04
Speaker A
local roads? What do you think the reason for that might be? First, I believe it's because they jacked it up. That is a radical move that should never be done; I am categorically against such a solution. It is the
04:18
Speaker A
simplest way to ruin a car's handling: lift it up. I mean, just take an example from motorsport.
04:25
Speaker A
Even in rally racing, you imagine they aren't driving on perfect roads, right, so there is, let's say, a base height at which the car is set up. Well, let's call it optimal. It is optimal in terms of suspension kinematics, suspension
04:38
Speaker A
articulation, and so on. The car is tuned around that. Sometimes you have to lift the car. For a second pass, ruts, this and that. But just by raising the car by 10 mm, by one centimeter, handling gets radically
04:50
Speaker A
worse. Even my driver, Kolya, says let's not raise the car; I'd rather drive slowly through sketchy spots where we might bottom out. Or better yet, put on a tougher, heavier skid plate. You really shouldn't lift your car; it's better to just scrape the
05:07
Speaker A
underbelly a bit. That's it. Because handling gets significantly worse. That's why you can lift a car, figuratively speaking; SUVs with high ground clearance, like a Cruiser 200, are perfectly fine. It does 180 on the highway and doesn't get blown around.
05:22
Speaker A
That's it. But the car was designed for that height from the start. I mean, there is a certain suspension articulation designed for a specific height. But installing longer springs and lifting it a couple of centimeters ...Sure, go ahead, you'll be fine for
05:35
Speaker A
picking mushrooms, but not on the highway. And our local tuning is usually the cheapest shocks plus stiffer, longer springs, and that's it.
05:44
Speaker A
The car doesn't handle well at all. But you can go mushroom picking. You can go mushroom picking.
05:48
Speaker A
So, there’s no doubt about where the problem lies. Install some proper European springs and feel the difference. That's it. That’s my opinion.
05:58
Speaker A
Stanislav. I’d like to connect this topic. Shock absorbers and springs in this case. Yes, usually this is exclusively about working with springs.
06:07
Speaker A
Sometimes they even use spacers. For instance, Skoda would manage to not even change the springs on the front or rear axle, just shove some kind of washer up there.
06:15
Speaker A
Yes. Yes. And I have a question: how does this affect the operation of the shock absorbers in general? Surely it has some optimal point where it’s meant to operate. Is it possible that it has a certain range of motion where it
06:26
Speaker A
manages to dissipate the energy of the sprung masses? But if it has been shifted and raised significantly, for example, and within those remaining 5 cm of travel for extension, it simply doesn't have time to dissipate that energy and just hits the internal
06:42
Speaker A
limiter with the valve stack? Well, if you lift it, its energy capacity actually increases because there is more compression travel.
06:48
Speaker A
Even. But for rebound, well, there is less rebound. So, in this case, on some bumps, the wheel will hang, and it will clatter inside.
06:55
Speaker A
That's it. Yes. So, accordingly, these impacts, especially in Volkswagens, their suspension is designed such that when the wheel is in the air, a very unpleasant impact occurs in the suspension.
07:08
Speaker A
So, it turns out you’ll be listening to this rattle of yours on a bad road if you drive fast.
07:13
Speaker A
That's it. Well, fundamentally, a change in ground clearance within a couple of centimeters has a major impact on how the shock absorbers work, yes. it slightly worsens energy intensity—or rather, improves folding energy intensity—while worsening wheel articulation performance and
07:29
Speaker A
other things, but it’s not that noticeable. So, in terms of energy capacity, handling bumps, and so on, it’s better to raise it, right? And that’s why I’m saying it’s not to say that this solution is absolutely wrong. It’s just designed
07:43
Speaker A
so that you can drive comfortably, or at least acceptably, on a broken road. Not fast, not fast.
07:50
Speaker A
I mean, yes, the car won't—well, it’s not that it won't bottom out at all, but it will bottom out less.
07:55
Speaker A
You’ll be able to drive over rough dirt roads at higher speeds, and things like that. So, for geometric clearance to pass through, say, while going fishing or mushroom picking without getting stuck, but driving fast in such a car will be extremely uncomfortable.
08:11
Speaker A
Therefore, if you’re a city dweller and not trying to pretend you’re an expert off-roader in a Solaris, as they say, then it’s unclear why you’d raise it. Exactly. But if you actually live in a village somewhere, where most
08:28
Speaker A
roads are unpaved, then you’ll be happy—then this setup is for you. So that’s what the "bad road package, " known as the Russian one, does, right ? Yes, exactly. So, one must understand that this change, this modification, it definitely works on bad roads and at
08:49
Speaker A
low speeds. It’s a cheap way to add a bit of energy capacity and ground clearance, making the car better in that regard. But, as they say, there’s no such thing as tuning that only brings benefits. With any change,
09:03
Speaker A
there’s a trade-off somewhere. There’s always a flip side to the coin. The flip side is a really significant degradation in handling at high speeds. And, well, the situation is genuinely dangerous. Meaning, if someone gets distracted and exceeds the
09:20
Speaker A
legal speed limit—say, up to 140 km/h —and hits a bump on a long curve, they could end up writing off the car and sending themselves to the hospital, in the best-case scenario.
09:36
Speaker A
Well, it's certainly not worth it. That’s why, even though a stock suspension might handle that same spot without any effort, figuratively speaking. So, you have to understand that if you have such a car, do not violate traffic laws.
09:49
Speaker A
I also want to tie this back to the story I started with, where a person wrote to me, reached out, and I, by the way, advised him first of all to at least lower the front of the car. Yes,
09:58
Speaker A
well, my understanding is that there's a beam in the back, a regular dependent beam, so I said, "Don't touch the beam yet, and look, start with the front axle, lower the front axle to, well, I put it this way, the position of the
10:10
Speaker A
control arms, so they...I mean, it's hard to pick specific springs." Well, that's what we decided. Okay. And what problem did the person run into, right?
10:18
Speaker A
I mean, if before he had enough energy capacity, the compression of those shock absorbers, their energy capacity was higher, as we just discussed, when he installed, essentially, European springs, it started bottoming out.
10:28
Speaker A
It started bottoming out normally. I mean that's why, that's why they install a rough road package.
10:32
Speaker A
I told him, "Look for stiffer aftermarket shock absorbers for the front." Did I tell him correctly, Stanislav?
10:40
Speaker A
The first thing I disagree with is, the person there wants more handling and comfort at high speed. Right, he needed to lower the car, but I categorically disagree that you should only lower the nose. You need to lower the whole car.
10:51
Speaker A
I mean, that is also one of the ways to increase, so to speak, the car's turn-in, to make it more oversteery, is to raise the rear or lower the nose. I mean, with such a change, when you only
11:05
Speaker A
lower the nose, you make the car, yeah, maybe a bit more controlled, but in limit turns, it will show oversteer, especially off-throttle. I mean, the person might, by lowering only the nose , get some positive effect and like
11:21
Speaker A
everything. And then, like in my example, he drove into others in a fast turn, not even looking at the speedometer at 140, no, just saw some Kamaz ahead, caught up to it, and just let off the gas, pressed the brake a
11:32
Speaker A
little bit, and that's it. And went, as they say, tail-first into the Kamaz, so to speak. That is an absolutely normal situation. Therefore, if you have decided to lower the car, you shouldn't lower just the nose, you need to lower
11:43
Speaker A
the whole car. Everything, absolutely, yes. Yes. So this is the first solution. Therefore, of course, these 2 cm you removed, those 2 cm of suspension travel, is a fairly serious loss of energy capacity. You need to install different shock absorbers. Which ones,
11:56
Speaker A
I don't know, you have to look into the issue, because there are no universal shock absorbers. Well, more, as they say, high-quality ones. In general, uh, if you want, I mean in my understanding , if like proper tuning starts with the
12:07
Speaker A
right, with the right, with the right shock absorbers. So, everything else, people around here love to throw it away, and this, you know, the catalytic converter. That's, like, a sort of Russian tuning style. I don't understand where it even came from, who
12:21
Speaker A
thought it up, or who needs it. I mean, the first thing you have to do with any car is pull out the muffler and make it some kind of super uncomfortable vehicle in terms of noise. What they’re trying to achieve with that,
12:35
Speaker A
I don’t understand, but apparently, it’s just—well, I don’t get it, and I haven't found anyone who can explain it to me. Right. And the second point is, they go and do something else there, then. No, what I’m saying is,
12:46
Speaker A
let’s divide tuning into categories. There is visual tuning, I’m very fond of it, and I’m a fan of it myself. I mean, I like making a car unique and all that, so that it looks beautiful.
12:58
Speaker A
So, a beautiful car and a properly functioning car shouldn't be in conflict, so to speak. For instance, if you put on nice wheels, but in the same sizes, it won't change how the car handles on the road. It will just be
13:12
Speaker A
prettier because it has nicer wheels. Right. And if they happen to be lighter , then that will improve its, let's say , handling, yes. Right. But if we are talking about tuning designed to make the car drive better, then in my view,
13:26
Speaker A
it’s primarily about the shock absorbers. And by the way, I want to say something very important, Stanislav. Many people for some reason think that if something is wrong with the car, if the suspension is bottoming out, and they
13:38
Speaker A
don’t like it, well, in all these chats and forums, people immediately start advising: "Install stiffer springs." But personally, I believe the most important thing is the shock absorber, and that the spring only determines the height and roll stiffness. The car's performance and
13:53
Speaker A
behavior on the road are primarily determined by the hydraulics, by the shock absorber. All these suspension bottom-outs are just the shock absorbers. No matter what springs you put in, it will still bottom out. The job of a shock absorber is energy
14:04
Speaker A
dissipation. Am I right, Sta? Well, definitely. It’s just that people who say otherwise didn't study physics in school. Let’s not be so harsh.
14:11
Speaker A
Right. No, that’s not being harsh. Well, there’s a problem with physics these days, Stanislav. But this is, I don’t know, the first or second year of studying physics in school. It’s just potential energy; just do the math. I
14:24
Speaker A
mean, uh, the people who...well, the question is, why did people even go to school then? Well, we were forced to.
14:30
Speaker A
There’s a saying that if you go to physics class in school, everything around you is simple and understandable , but if you don't, you're surrounded by a magical Hogwarts and unknown miracles. That’s why Well, I...
14:41
Speaker A
It's more interesting to live that way. No, I like it when everything is clear.
14:45
Speaker A
And so, I’ll just give a quick example—again, they lied—the rougher the road, the more uneven it is , the softer the springs used.
14:54
Speaker A
Of course, soft springs. You need a bad road for it to work better. Exactly right. So, for the most broken road, you’d use the softest springs.
15:03
Speaker A
Meaning, the smoother, the more, let’s say, high-quality the road, the stiffer the springs used, because energy absorption is not in the springs at all. So the hardware, the springs, the stabilizers, they really influence, uh, the responsiveness of the car,
15:22
Speaker A
maybe the transition time, the reaction , how quickly it responds. No, not only that, the shock absorber also influences it greatly, but energy absorption is, like, 95%the shock absorber. Whenever people try to argue with me on this topic, I give them a
15:38
Speaker A
simple problem. Just imagine a situation: you have, uh, roughly speaking, the springs you have, the travel, uh, of those springs, let’s take a production car, you lift it up, say, half a meter off the road. Then you let it go, and it drops. There. And
15:57
Speaker A
let’s assume your suspension worked in such a way that it didn't bottom out . Meaning it fully compressed, fully compressed, and, strictly speaking, no bottoming out occurred. So, during that compression travel from fully extended to fully compressed, all the potential
16:12
Speaker A
energy of a car weighing, say, 1.5 tons lifted half a meter was absorbed. Just calculate where that energy went. Part of it went into the compressed spring, and part was, as they say, dissipated by the hydraulics. Just even in
16:28
Speaker A
percentages, what percentage do the hydraulics take on? If you put in a spring that’s, say, 20%stiffer, will it change the overall energy absorption ? Or, well, it will change, but only by a laughable 1-2%.
16:42
Speaker A
Well, yeah, I agree. So that’s why it’s a fairly primitive problem, so to speak, uh, for someone who hasn't finished school. I mean, anyone who has , I don’t know, finished nine grades is perfectly capable of calculating this problem. And people who finished
17:02
Speaker A
school a few years ago are already unable to calculate, as I’ve noticed. Well, there is such a problem. So, anyway, about shock absorbers. The main thing is that if we start having these issues with bottoming out and rebound
17:14
Speaker A
impacts when we drive over a bump, both are a result of hydraulics, whether it’s compression bottoming or rebound .
17:22
Speaker A
Well, when it comes to rebound, it’s clear that a knocking sound in the suspension can indeed be due to, as they say, the design of the shock absorbers. A second situation, like with Volkswagens, they have a specific design feature in their upper mounts.
17:33
Speaker A
They rattle when you unload them. Ah, well, that can also happen. Yes, yes. That’s how it is, unfortunately.
17:39
Speaker A
And it’s better not to fight it, in principle. I would—yes, there are aftermarket mounts that solve this problem, but I wouldn’t bother. It’s just quite rare for the car to be fully unloaded.
17:50
Speaker A
There. But, well, that’s why these impacts when, as they say, driving over external obstacles are often more about the car’s design.
17:58
Speaker A
That’s fine. So, here, yes, lowering the car a bit will make it less of an issue. There.
18:03
Speaker A
Because you essentially add travel for, let’s say, the rebound, and, well, you reduce the compression travel. Bottoming out is solved, well, cheaply by raising the car a bit, by increasing the ground clearance, but then we get the downsides that we just
18:22
Speaker A
... started with, yes. So if we don’t want to deal with this, it means we need more energy-intensive shock absorbers.
18:29
Speaker A
That means looking into the aftermarket , studying the experience of European cars, seeing what’s installed where, right? Meaning searching for something, and that’s the problem right there.
18:37
Speaker A
That is the problem. We have a civilian car, not a sports car. We can't just put a coilover suspension on it.
18:42
Speaker A
No, that’s the exact problem—that, so to speak, European tuning doesn’t suit us for the most part, because European tuning, as I call it, is a track-oriented version. Meaning they install shock absorbers not so much for energy absorption, but so the car
18:58
Speaker A
reacts more sharply and handles better on very good roads. That’s 90%of the tuning that is generally offered in Europe. So just because, I don’t know , 90%of people in Europe install those shocks, they might not work for us at
19:14
Speaker A
all. We're talking budget cars, remember, those Polo/Rapid sedans, where we say a person just wants a good car, adequate, reasonably comfortable and reasonably...
19:26
Speaker A
Here it's simpler. I'll explain: here you just need to look for a shock absorber with higher energy capacity.
19:32
Speaker A
That's it, that's it, yes. Because now put yourself in the shoes of the car manufacturer. They care a lot that the shock absorber is a ) cheap, and b) lasts at least 100,000 kilometers without, you know, breaking.
19:44
Speaker A
What happens when a shock absorber works, when it absorbs energy? The piston is forced through the oil. There is a specific pressure differential below and above the piston. Right.
19:55
Speaker A
I’m putting it simply, the oil flows through certain channels. If the pressure differential, the greater the pressure differential that the shock absorber can handle, the higher the suspension's energy capacity.
20:06
Speaker A
Accordingly, with a higher pressure differential, there's immediately more load on all the seals, gaskets, and components. If you take a standard shock absorber, take it apart and, say, shrink some channels, reduce the diameter, maybe tighten some springs, just these...the maximum pressure at
20:28
Speaker A
which everything opens becomes higher. Your energy capacity will immediately change, but the shock will fail not after 100,000, for example, but after 20,000.
20:41
Speaker A
So engineers don't do it this way because they can't make such a shock absorber.
20:47
Speaker A
It's because they need a warranty, because they make shocks, they are solving the problem of making a shock absorber, figuratively speaking, for pennies, so that it still lasts 100,000 . So you get a crap shock absorber for pennies that can last 100,000.
21:02
Speaker A
But it’s nothing special, though, that’s a normal situation. Therefore, as in that joke, we do renovations: cheap, fast, and high-quality. Pick any two, actually, one remains.
21:15
Speaker A
Just one, yes. Or it's impossible to have all three. It's the same situation with shock absorbers here. Therefore, in principle, if we're talking about budget cars, you just need a better-made shock absorber, which doesn't differ in specs from the stock
21:27
Speaker A
one, it's just more energy-absorbent. It doesn't have to be some super-duper one, there are plenty of firms that make such shocks, like Bilstein or something else, go ahead.
21:37
Speaker A
Koni are very common in Russia; they leak quickly. And they have adjustments. I don't recommend anyone install Koni.
21:45
Speaker A
Tell us, Stanislav, what's your take? Just personal experience. They leak quickly. No, they're complete crap, the performance is terrible.
21:50
Speaker A
the characteristics, precisely. the characteristics, precisely, that is to say, these are shock absorbers that —how should I put it—well, there are bad shocks, there are good ones, there are very bad ones, and then there are Koni. That’s how we understand it
22:03
Speaker A
. Well, I don’t know how they work. It’s just that I can't drive on them, because, well, to understand when they break, you have to drive on them, and they do break; I just can't. They don't have them at all. I mean, I’ve tried
22:14
Speaker A
a few times. And what is the problem? Exactly. I won’t get into the technical side.
22:19
Speaker A
These are shock absorbers made for, so to speak, hypothetically, for track cars. Uh-huh. I mean, well, these are the shock absorbers that are made. Although I know many people who put Koni on jeeps. Maybe I’m just not a "jeeper." I, let’s
22:33
Speaker A
say, have never owned a jeep, and I’m not really a fan of jeeps in general.
22:37
Speaker A
Well, I mean, I know people who love driving jeeps, but I don’t understand it. For example, I don’t like driving KamAZ trucks or jeeps. Exactly. But maybe they work on jeeps; on any more or less standard passenger car, Koni—in my
22:48
Speaker A
personal experience—maybe something has changed, but I don't want to experiment. It wasn’t just one car.
22:54
Speaker A
It wasn’t just one experiment. Even more so, I installed them because they were recommended to me, and so on and so forth. Perhaps I have my own take on the situation, but I have personally excluded Koni from the list of shock
23:08
Speaker A
absorbers I would ever consider installing. I just don't want to experiment anymore. No, well, that's interesting. That’s just my view. Yes.
23:17
Speaker A
That’s why, for me, Koni—well, there were several attempts, as they say, and they were all extremely negative. What from the civilian market was interesting? Good. Bilsteins work.
23:29
Speaker A
Bilsteins are, in my view and from my personal experience, the optimal balance of price, quality, and performance. Why Bilstein is good— shortened versions, standard, and so on —to replace old ones, it's better. I mean, I’ve forgotten this, but
23:44
Speaker A
essentially, I can just use Bilstein because everything is laid out for them , et cetera; for instance, if you want to lower your suspension, I usually use their products. So I install Bilstein if I just need to install something,
23:58
Speaker A
especially for older cars. For older cars, Bilstein makes the most adequate parts. And since I have a love for all sorts of retro cars, classic Mercedes-Benzes. Well, Bilstein works very well there. And I usually like to lower the car. So for me, this
24:17
Speaker A
Well, that's already exterior tuning, Stanislav, probably. Yes. Well, yeah, it's exterior. This is, in this case, it's not—it's about the exterior.
24:23
Speaker A
Everything, of course, of course. Well, I mean, some classic Mercedes, when it's dropped 2-3 cm, I think it looks much nicer and more beautiful on the road. Well, I understand that too. And Bilstein makes an adequate suspension that allows you to maintain comfort in
24:41
Speaker A
the car and keep it acceptable for daily use. I'm talking specifically about civilian driving. Not racing, just making it very comfortable while being good and reliable to use. I never speed in my thirty-year-old Mercedes on principle.
24:54
Speaker A
That's why I never even floor the gas pedal. I drive it for pleasure. That's why, yeah, I like it.
25:03
Speaker A
Accordingly, even if we take a case where everything suits us and we just want to install a more energy-efficient shock absorber. You buy the one—I forgot what they call that line of theirs—that is a direct replacement, without changing the height, it's all
25:16
Speaker A
simple. You swapped it, the ride height didn't change at all. Uh-huh. And in my opinion, it works better for our roads.
25:25
Speaker A
That's great. But not on every car. I can say that outright. You need to read up and consult with those who have already installed it.
25:30
Speaker A
Yes. On some cars it works out, on others it doesn't. But it works. At the same time, it's a relatively budget-friendly option. So, what makes Bilstein good? It's cheap because it's primitive, and it has quite good performance characteristics despite
25:49
Speaker A
that. It's not a complicated shock absorber. I mean, yeah, if you take it apart and compare it to some more serious shock absorber, it will be very primitive. It might not be much more complex on the inside than a factory
26:06
Speaker A
shock, but it still works. Well, it works significantly better than the stock one. Stanislav, I would like to return to this point. We touched on it briefly at the beginning, regarding the fact that you can't just lower the front and
26:17
Speaker A
leave the rear. In general, what are the mistakes and what do they lead to?
26:20
Speaker A
If a person, for example—as we already discussed—lowers the front but leaves the rear, what will they get ? If, for example, a person wants to increase the load capacity, they might leave the factory springs in the front —which are quite soft—and put
26:35
Speaker A
heavy-duty springs in the back, right? Let's explain to everyone what this will actually lead to on the road. How will this affect the driving experience ? What kind of sensations will they get ? Well, those budget car owners love
26:48
Speaker A
driving seedlings to their summer houses. I understand, Andrey, but I don't know, I don't know. I can't, I don't experiment.
26:53
Speaker A
They stiffened up the rear end too much . Well. Heavy-duty springs in the back, and soft ones in the front.
26:59
Speaker A
I understand, yes. But I'm saying that this can also lead to sudden oversteer in fast, limit-handling corners.
27:08
Speaker A
Exactly, well, that's clear. Well, all things considered, you still need to experiment. You have to experiment.
27:15
Speaker A
Basically, I always say that you have to try everything. I mean, people here love to tune and work on cars, just like you and I are sitting here acting like experts, you know, when it comes down to it. I mean, any situation—
27:27
Speaker A
I've faced it so many times where you have a predictable car, and we're sitting there with an engineer before tests, showing off to each other. Let's set the differentials this way. We set the differentials a certain way, thinking we'll start with this
27:38
Speaker A
configuration and then switch to that one. The racer will tell us which is better. And we assume that with this configuration, we'll get this feedback from the racer, and with that configuration, some other feedback. We get there, and it's the exact opposite,
27:49
Speaker A
you know? And, well, that's exactly how it goes. Like, I had a situation recently: Kolya was racing, and on one of the stages, a rock just tore the expansion reservoir off his rear shock absorber. So the shock absorber leaked
28:05
Speaker A
out completely. You understand, it's a major racing remote-reservoir shock, the reservoir breaks off, all the oil drains out, it's empty. The pilot didn't notice it and won the stage. I still can't find an explanation for this; in my understanding, when that
28:23
Speaker A
happens, I'd ask, "Can you feel the rear end starting to wander a bit?" I say, "Is it pulling anywhere?" He says, "No, the handling is fine, I didn't notice anything." Well, Kolya likes that; there was a history when he raced on tracks, he
28:33
Speaker A
loved extreme oversteer back then. No, in this particular case, there was no oversteer. I didn't have the telemetry. So, by and large, radically, I mean, here's an example: we got something that, well, when I was asked what would happen to the car, I said it
28:48
Speaker A
would be impossible to drive at all. But a radical change didn't happen. Well, after all, Stanislav, let's at least give people a rough approximation based on the theory.
28:59
Speaker A
No, that's what I'm getting at. Let's say you want to do this, and it's very important for you to haul cement to your summer house, for example. Find some, I don't know, asphalt, like an old airfield or something where you can
29:11
Speaker A
slide the car around. Just speed up to a certain point and try some lane changes between cones at high speed.
29:20
Speaker A
While you're at it, try everything: hitting the gas, letting off, and braking in the turn. See how the car behaves. I mean, a civilian car should absolutely not demonstrate significant oversteer in this situation at high speed. It shouldn't. This isn't a race
29:39
Speaker A
car; it's just dangerous. For me to understand that a car is driving inadequately, I don't need to go to a track and jerk it around. It's enough for me to speed up on a regular road and just, what you might call, turn the
29:50
Speaker A
car a little bit. You know the feeling, when you're driving in a straight line at high speed and you make a light steering movement. The car should—you should have the sensation that the rear is riding on rails, while the nose
30:04
Speaker A
moves, there's some tire slip, and it turns. That's how it should be. But what if the rear starts to slide?
30:09
Speaker A
And if, yes, you realize that when you're driving and wiggling the wheel, you have the feeling that the front wheels are just...and the rear, as if it's not slipping, it just starts rotating around you relative to the nose. Meaning, it's not the nose
30:21
Speaker A
turning, but the rear turning relative to the nose. Not at all. This is all happening within your own lane. If you have that feeling, you can be sure that at high speed, if you turn the wheel harder, you'll go rear-first. Well,
30:33
Speaker A
this is for a person who knows how to handle a car and has some experience with these things. If not, then go provoke that situation. That's why, when I've made changes to a car, I've gone out, tried it like that, and
30:45
Speaker A
thought, "Aha." I said, "No, I don't like this, let's change something." So for me, it's very important that the car, as they say, even though I know how to, well, handle a car—or let's say I knew how, I haven't fully
30:58
Speaker A
mastered it, I'm still learning—but I perfectly understand that my reflexes, I mean, I don't want to be sweating behind the wheel or expecting some kind of trick from the car. That's why I naturally tune the car so that it
31:12
Speaker A
doesn't give me any unpleasant surprises. Why would I want to scare myself, as they say? Let's get back to our budget cars, yes, to the person who came to me with a question. So, the first problem that was annoying the
31:25
Speaker A
person is the raised suspension; it needs to be solved by lowering it. So, we can install springs here from a European model, right?
31:33
Speaker A
Yes. Exactly, to get that specific suspension height which... I'll say right away, many people do it this way: they lower it and install stiffer springs. Well, that...
31:42
Speaker A
Stiff springs with poor shock absorbers —that's the worst, so to speak, the worst combination you can get.
31:48
Speaker A
That's exactly right. So we have adjusted the suspension height back to the range that the engineer originally designed for this car. We brought it closer to the original concept that was intended. And from there, we need to find the right shock absorbers, there's
32:04
Speaker A
no way around that. And that's the biggest problem here. Let's put it this way. The question is, if a person really needs this, if they want a comfortable car not just on bad roads, but also at some more or
32:15
Speaker A
less decent speeds. Well, stock shock absorbers at decent speeds work, let's say, reasonably well .
32:26
Speaker A
So, if you pick a spring that isn't too stiff but still sets the car to a normal height, then maybe the stock shock absorber can still perform okay.
32:33
Speaker A
Well, quite possibly, yes. It's better to stick to factory solutions or some common aftermarket ones until the very end.
32:40
Speaker A
Yeah, you need to, you need to stick to something very common so it's easier to find and buy.
32:46
Speaker A
And here's a point about springs, let's say, I've also studied this question a lot. Regarding the spring's operation, there is a certain vibration frequency of the body that is calculated for a person's comfort while inside the car.
32:58
Speaker A
This frequency usually corresponds to the frequency of a human gait, around 1.8-2 Hz. Right. But that's just for selecting springs, yes. But when we install shock absorbers, it very often happens that a stiff shock absorber creates the sensation of a very stiff
33:16
Speaker A
suspension. So, when the road is bad or good—when the road is good, smooth, and lacks those ripples or sharp cracks and potholes—we experience that specific body oscillation frequency on smooth, rolling waves. And that motion sickness, the seasick effect, that's
33:33
Speaker A
what this is about, yes—it's down to the spring calculations. No matter what shock absorbers you install, calculating the spring for that specific frequency—matching the hardware—that’s what’s at work here. But if we’re talking about bad roads, you can forget all about that.
33:49
Speaker A
That’s purely the job of the shock absorbers. And it could happen that we install quite soft, comfortable springs , but by going overboard with the shocks, we end up with a stiff, bone-shaking ride.
33:59
Speaker A
Exactly. I’m just saying, regarding the shocks—to reiterate—you need to understand what they were designed for.
34:04
Speaker A
For example, take a rally car: there are races on asphalt and races on gravel. Absolutely different shock absorbers.
34:12
Speaker A
I mean, completely different. Different. They take them off and put on completely different ones, not just slightly different, because it’s simply impossible to drive on gravel with asphalt shocks.
34:23
Speaker A
Conversely, no matter how you adjust gravel shocks, you’ll still be slow driving on asphalt. If you, let's say, bought a "great" shock absorber because you read it was the best, installed it, and went on gravel, all your fillings
34:36
Speaker A
would fall out within 5 km. Then you’d re-read carefully and see they were the best shocks for track days, for instance. So that’s— Well, yeah, those shocks are for good asphalt, designed for driving on tarmac roads. Therefore, you need to
34:50
Speaker A
understand what the shock absorber is for. Because there’s no such thing as just "good" shock absorbers. It depends on the task at hand. I have a BMW, the 1M, if that’s the right name for it, a rather rare car. The stock suspension
35:03
Speaker A
is total garbage. Honestly, that’s the worst suspension I’ve ever encountered. In stock form, that is.
35:08
Speaker A
Just as an example. When I first drove it from Moscow to Riga, the windshield cracked on a bump.
35:16
Speaker A
It was that bad. Even like that. It was, well, it wasn't really a suspension at all. I mean, when they installed it—well, BMW is generally known for having lousy suspension. But this one, they must have deliberately set out to create
35:27
Speaker A
something extra bizarre. Maybe it drives fine on a smooth road somewhere, but it just can’t handle a single bump. I installed Öhlins, not racing ones, but specifically the dampers Öhlins offers for this car that are, well, for civilian life.
35:49
Speaker A
Yes, more so. I generally like the Öhlins philosophy, how they tune things and so on, yes. I have a lot of experience working with these dampers and understand what to do. And plus, I know that there is a possibility to get
36:04
Speaker A
inside or redo something if I want to. We installed the Öhlins, yes, it became significantly better. I mean, it's certainly night and day compared to what it was, but in the end, we still had to get into the dampers and
36:16
Speaker A
redo the shim stack quite seriously. Right now, of course, I am extremely satisfied with how the car performs.
36:23
Speaker A
For instance, I just drove here to Riga in this same car again. Yes. And when my wife found out we were going to Riga in this car, she said, "Oh, I won't be able to ride in this stool." I said, "
36:36
Speaker A
I'll be careful." Nevertheless, we made it. To her surprise, she said that it actually turned out to be quite comfortable. Even though it still has the original, very stiff springs; nothing was changed there. Not the height, nothing at all. It’s just
36:48
Speaker A
that the right dampers were installed and modified for our conditions. So, it turned out that the car drives quite comfortably. At the same time, it doesn't bottom out on any bumps or dips . Well, it handles ripples in the road
37:02
Speaker A
perfectly. That’s because I wasn't setting it up for track days or racing, but for regular, as they say, driving.
37:09
Speaker A
Well, let's summarize. So, what have we achieved? You have to be very careful with the hydraulics. That's the main thing, right?
37:19
Speaker A
Yes. And everything gets checked, right? Well, again, you first need to understand what task you are solving.
37:28
Speaker A
If the goal is fast driving on good roads with comfort and safety, yes, exactly.
37:35
Speaker A
But if you are driving on bad roads, then perhaps you could... Yes, a kit for bad roads is exactly for you.
37:39
Speaker A
You've already bought it ready-made. You've bought a turnkey solution; there's nothing left to do.
37:44
Speaker A
And on that note, yes, that’s all for now. Our first part of the conversation with Stanislav is probably finished. We’ve summarized it. And next will be the second part, probably about aerodynamics.
37:55
Speaker A
I didn't talk about it too much, just a little. It's no big deal. See you later. My country is Belarus. La-la-la-la-la. My country Belarus. La-la-la. My country Belarus. My country Belarus.
Topics:car suspensionshock absorbersride heightcar handlingbudget carsPolo sedanSolarisRapidsprings tuningBilstein

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