Öhlins optioned car owners - please help!

Not an Ohlins owner but know they need rebuilding every 4 years or 40,000km (25,000miles). This is recommended to be done by Ohlins service dealers but could probably be done at any decent motorsport company who rebuild dampers.

 

Sadly not mate. Hopefully someone on here has had it done before and can advise.

 

No problem. Hopefully the damper service fixes the creaking issue

 

Yeah my local dealer is also completely clueless on these cars, which is very confidence inspiring

 

Anyone havd a link or copy of this?

My car has just turned 3 years and has 4 year 40k service plan with warranty to 5 years. So I fancy a nice little letter to renault uk asking where I should take them for there service next year (obviously I was not expecting renault to change its service schedule for such a low volume option).

 

Must be a few more people on here with older cars trophy with ohlins option available in 2014. So those must be 5 years old now?

 

My 2015 Cup-s has Ohlins and I'm pretty sure I read the official advice given by some Renault bod on the Renaultsport forum was just to do a visual check in the same way as any other shock absorber - no need for a rebuild to a predetermined schedule.

This is the thread, but the table appears to have disappeared
https://www.renaultsport.co.uk/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=87132&p=3

Having said that, experience on another car tells me Ohlins are probably past their best by 40k miles (as is any damper), so plan to get mine done next year when I get close to this mileage. Cost wise, I wont be surprised if it's the wrong side of £1k.

 

Just emailed BG motorsport with an enquiry. Planning for the worse, hoping for the best...

 

Not sure if there's a hard copy. The information came from a lad on facebook who got chatting to a couple Ohlins dealers at a recent event at Silverstone, but I had heard about the Ohlins needing extra care previous to this. As soon as the car goes out of warranty the dampers need rebuilding. Convenient timing for Renault!

 

That does look like an a**e covering exercise when you read that thread and that was 3 years ago talking about cosmetic corrosion.

 

Thanks. Good for the future. People can plan what and when they get it done.

It's a pain having a car sitting on blocks while the suspension is away.

I remember when I had my trophy Sachs sent away the local garage I used to remove them had a spare set to swap across.

 

Thanks for that RSJamie - not quite as bad as I thought and closer to what I'd hoped.

Cornering force developed blade style anti roll bars and a custom valved Nitron setup for the VX220. By reputation he's a very clever guy.

I'm capable of stripping the dampers off the car but like notadiesel it would be very inconvenient and I doubt my nieghbours would like it much. Ideally I'm going to need to find a garage to strip off the dampers and store the car for a few days while I get them serviced.

 

It's a pity they don't do an exchange scheme.

They send you refurbed set and you return your worn dampers and they refurb and supply those to next person. As I said thats what happened to my clio trophy. Local garage had a set of worn Sachs. I sent away. They came back. I did a bit big cosmetic tarting. Local garage fitted and kept my shot set.

Alternative is there may be a used set of cup suspension on ebay that you can swap on your car while they are away. Given the amount of people that up rate suspension on meg there must be plenty of sets of used Oem suspension. The only thing is that double the Labour to swap them in and back off again.

 

I'd probably go Ohlins service centre even if there is a slight premium. That receipt in my folder when I sell it on will probably car more weight.

I'd also be interested in their "drop the car off & pick it up a week later" price.

 

When the time comes I'll probably just approach my local RS specialist (Four Ashes) and bend over..... Agreed Notadiesel, the difference in cost is not enough to justify not going "legit".

 

Anybody had them serviced yet?

4 yrs or 40k km must be most sets by now?

I know rs Jamie who originally posted swapped them out. then out them back on.Then sold the car.

 

I spoke to Mick Gardner Racing who are an authorised Ohlins centre. Off the top of my head, the cheapest rebuild is circa £350 up to circa £650 if all bushes need replacing. Personally I’d just pay the £650 and get them all done as it’ll be Sod’s law that a year or two later the other bushes will go.

They don’t offer a drive in service though so I’ve bought a used set of Cup springs/dampers that’ll need swapping in and out. Might give BG Motorsport a call to see what they offer as they rebuilt my Sachs when I had a Clio Trophy and service was excellent.

 

Be interested to hear his you get on. Who you use? Method? Timescales? Costs.

I used bg motorsport for my Sachs on my clio also.

Only extra thing as do any refurb the casing? As i sanded down and painted the clio ones. But that was a poor effort in my part.

 

Dropped my car off today with my local specialist to get them to remove the Ohlins dampers to send off to BG motorsport for service. I was going to do it anyway but I've had a knocking noise that's prooved impossible to trace and I suspect the front damper is the culprit.

Will report back when it's all back together.

 

Excellent. Keep us posted. Are you without car at the moment? Or you got a replacement set on it?

What was the miles/age when they were removed?

 

They lent me a little Twingo with a cheeky exhaust. Not as interesting as the track prepped 182 they used to have as a courtesy car, but at least my ears aren't ringing!

Cars done about 38K. I'm fully prepared to not feel any difference, it was just the light input rebound knock on the front offside and the fact I like to do things properly with my cars that prompted the Ohlins service.

It's costing about £350 more than doing it myself, which I don't think is too bad for the convenience - I only have a single garage and that's occupied with another car that's currently "resting". The only place I could put the car on stands would be a shared drive way, basically a no-no.

 

Picked the car up today.

It's difficult to give any definitive judgement based on the sort of mundane drive I've just done, but it definitely dealt with the giant expansion gaps on the section of M6 and the one section of local road that resembles the moons surface I drove on with more compliance. I had noticed in the last 6 months or so that the car was starting to feel a bit crashy but it now rounds off the harshness on the sort of bigger hits you'd expect the DFV to operate. The noise I was getting on the front right has thankfully also gone.

BG motorsport dyno the shocks as part of the service and one of fronts was way out of specification, which indicates that the suggested 40k mile service intervals are probably about right. I think the oil is probably the biggest influence on the reduction in performance as it will degrade or more accurately "shear" with use altering the viscosity. They can (and did) service the rear shocks and replaced an additional o-ring on one of them that was starting to degrade as well as some new bellows.

The process involved Four Ashes Renault booking a slot with BG motorsport as they are too busy to send anything to them ad-hoc if you're in anyway in a hurry, even then turn around was about 10 days. We timed it so my car was occupying a ramp whilst the mechanic was away on holiday to avoid it blocking him working on other cars. I can't fault Four Ashes Wolverhampton and would recommend them to anyone.

Value wise I have essentially new very high quality shock absorbers that are considered to be right up there with the best, weather that performance increase correlates with the significant cost over new cup spec shocks is down to personal judgement. For me the jury's out until I can get it down some of my favourite bumpy B roads but to an extent I can use man maths to justify it to myself by the fact I paid well below average asking price for the car and that was before used car prices went crazy.

 

Thanks for that.

Very informative. I must admit that was more than I thought. Maybe I was basing on Clio Trophy where only two expensive shocks.

Had you priced up the service cost before from BG Motorsport? or was that a shock ( excuse the pun)

I imagine you wont loose on it. People are going to factor in the last service on Ohlins when buying a car in a similar way they do with a Clio Trophy.

 

Yes the BG motorsport part of the bill was about £200 more than I was expecting based on the original quote I got from them. Some of that will be the additional parts and some is probably a bit of margin for Four Ashes, although being very british about it I didn't ask.

 

Oh so your is the meg having its ohlins done a four ashes, seen that on insta.

 

Yep that's me, although I find the Clio V6 on the next ramp far more interesting