Awesome info thanks Tom. I will be looking into it further and will probably turn mine up. I know its a 10mm thread and it hasn't got a spacer so going by your chart was installed wrong to begin with. I still would love to know the technical reason they did this. I guess its still an interference issue. Interesting to note the right hand most option they mention bad road conditions. I guess if you start hammering the shocks over an extended period the rubber might start to go off and then you may run into interference issues. To be honest mine aren't even bilstein at the moment. They are monroe.
Another quite interesting story which may spark a bit of debate in here. I have a very good friend by the name of Wim Le Roy. He is a retired Belgium gentlemen I meet some years ago here in New Zealand. He came over here from Europe 15 years ago to retire. With him he brought his collection of several Lancias and Alfa Romeo's that he has restored over the years. He was obviously a very talented engineer having rebuilt all his cars himself. From the outset we sparked up a great relationship based on the mutual love of restoring these lovely old girls.
Anyway I never really delved too much into his past other than knowing that his retirement was payed for with a life long career as a top level executive for a large corporate in Europe.
While I was in the throws of pulling apart the 113 Wim made regular almost daily visits for a cup of coffee and his daily progress update. One particular morning he turned up and I was lying on my back removing the rear shocks. Just as I stood up with it in my hand Wim asked me my intention for it. He had clearly identified it as a Monroe. I had grown up putting Monroes in as an extreme cost cutting measure that had to be taken when you were 16 with no money. In my mind they were not well regarded for either performance or reliability.
Anyway my response to Wim was along those line. I also casually hurled the shock into a bucket of parts that I intended to bin right in front of him. We carried on our discussion and I was non the wiser to what he was actually thinking.
I didn't here from Wim for quite some weeks after that. I also know his son Robin very well. Robin also picked up the bug from his father and has a beautiful lotus elan 2+2 and a 1950's fully restored Alfa Julietta? After asking Robin why I hadn't heard from his dad for so long there was a long uncomfortable pause where upon Robin spilled the proverbial beans.
In fact Wim served over 20 years for Monroe initially as one of it senior designers and then in upper level management. Sinking gut wrenching hole in the stomach moment ensued. Foot in mouth I plucked up the courage the next day and phoned Wim and apologized so effusively that my tongue had worn the skin clear off my lips. Wim was very humble and accepted my apology. Within a day or two our normal catch ups resumed.
Herein lies the bit you guys may find a bit controversial. Wim did however take the time to sit down and explain that in his opinion that even though bilsteinare a great shock absorber that in the shock absorber world there rock star reputation may in some instances be somewhat over blown. He then started gushing a ton of technical detail about the shocks I had just discarded and started contrasting them with the technical aspects of the equivalent . bilstein. I twas painfully obvious that I was not going to win any argument when a real macoy shock absorber engineer was sitting at my dinner table.
We talked about it some more in terms of what I was going to use the car for. His down to earth common sense logic cutting me down at every point of debate. The car is not high performance, handled well before it came off the road, shocks dont leak or show no signs of wear. Why go out and spend 700USD for no good reason. The only answer I could come up with was 'cause I want it to look right'. I reflected and very quickly came to the conclusion that I was starting to look and sound like Paris Hilton on a bad day. Perhaps I should go out and buy a matching handbag dog to match the car as wel
We went and hooked out the Monroes from the rubbish bin and with a very skilled eye he established that they were almost brand new and assured me that the performance of them would at least if not match better the performance of the bilstein. The price difference he put down to corporate mentality and mass production. His knowledge and conviction were very very persuading and as a result I pulled the other three shocks out of the bin, cleaned them up and gave them a fresh coat of satin paint...... to look like a bilstein.
So for the time being the Monroes are back in the car. I have stopped short at trying to manufacture some fake Bilstein stickers and hope that no one gets to close up and persona to notice. Will leave my stealthy little secret here with you guys.
I am interested in what you all think about this. In relation to the cups I wonder if the turned up cup is a bilstein thing? Will be asking my friend Wim when I see him again this week.
