Bilstein dampers

[Sugy77]

Hello together,

Does any of you have experience with Bilstein B6/36 dampers.
I am rebuilding a mini for having some fun on B-roads and was told that these are properly the best choice. I am going for a fully adjustable set-up incl. rear anti-roll-bar in conjunction with AVON tyres on rose petals.

Any thoughts are welcome.

Many thanks in advance
Fabio

[irlmin]

They are pretty good on a road car , decent quality and will do a good job for most 'road' applications . for anything more I have always used AVO and never had an issue . G

[SMOKE GREY]

I have Bilsteins on my car, and we took the Konis off Paddy’s 6 EMO and put the Bilsteins on , transformed it. They get a thumbs up from me.

[Sugy77]

Perfect,

Thanks a lot for the Feedback.

Fabio

[IslandBlue]

Useful for me too as I've got some Bilsteins on the shelf that I picked up cheap and have been meaning to fit...

[Maddog]

My historic racer came with Bilsteins on the front and Konis on the back when I bought it 25 years ago. Admittedly I haven't used it a lot in the intervening 25 years, but over the winter I pulled them all off, cleaned, inspected and put back on the car. Not even a hint of a leak. The car has since done several circuit events and still handles beautifully. The front Bilsteins seem to have lots of travel and benefit from raised top mounts to make the most of this feature.

[Sugy77]

Hello together,

Recently I have had the chance to talk to a Mini enthusiast that was involved with the development of this damper. He recommended not to use this damper as it was designed for standard height.
My car has been lowered and this would not work together.

Maybe this information is of use to somebody out there.

Thanks and regards
Fabio

[phil82]

Hi Fabio,

I fitted the BIlstein B36 to my brother's MK3 (it's the orange one featured in Oldtimer Markt at the end of last year) together with new springs and hilos.
The Mini sits on LP918 running 165 Yokos and has roughly 3cm gap between trimline and tyre so it's just not rubbing when cornering fast. Could be lowered even more if he would have fitted an anti roll bar.

Keith Calver once posted the damper length data on his website (PM me your email address and I'll share the pdf I once created with his data).
This are his measurements from the Bilstein dampers:
Front fully open: 324mm
Rear full open: 406mm
Front fully closed: 235mm
Rear fully closed: 241mm

As a comparision the shortend Spax have the following values:
Front fully open: 311mm
Rear full open: 381mm
Front fully closed: 222mm
Rear fully closed: 260mm

As you can see the Spax are a little bit shorter but the Bilstein are on the shorter side of the standard size dampers.
We didn't see any risk that the would bottem out on full compression.
Rebound travel at the front is also not an issue - you could still go for modified top damper brackets.
The only potential issue I see would is rebound on the rear axle as the max length of 406mm is quite long.
We didn't have any issues on rebound with the spring loosing preload when setting the static ride hight as described above.
But that of course also depends on the rear axle weight. But then you could still fit rebound buffers like 21A1517 at the rear or put "helper" springs into the hilos.

If you still fear it wouldn't work out you could measure the needed length both fully open and full closed (without springs fitted) and approach Bilstein if they are willing to produce you a special set to your needs. I did that both with Spax and KW in the past - worked perfectly.

Anyway I would go for it some way or the other.
Cheers Philipp

[Costafortune]

I wouldn't fit Spax dampers on a wheelbarrow.

Bilstein and Boge/Sachs are the damper of choice for design and quality.

[Sugy77]

Hello together,

Thanks a lot for the input. I will order a set. Interestingly enough these dampers are cheaper in the UK than here in country of it's origin Germany.

Thanks and regards
Fabio