I also built my Bilsteins.
Being in Europe, I tried to minimize the parts I needed to order from the US.
It is also illegal to have springs becoming unseated at full drop, so I added helper springs.
Springs were ordered from D Faulkner springs from the UK.
Bump stops I used are from BMW / Mini, which costed only 24 euros for 4 bump stops.
Part number(s) are: BMW (33536772740) BMW (33536772786) MINI (33531507254).
In the pictures, the Mini bump stop is on the left, the stock NB rear in the middle and the stock NB front in the right.
When using NB top hats, you can cut the stock washer and this will locate the Energy Suspension spring isolator very nicely.
I will upgrade to extended top hats in the future, but I will run stock height for the time being, should be a solid upgrade over the tired stock shocks anyway.
Some pictures:

 

What spring rates do You have ?

 

I have 550 Front / 350 Rear, the helper springs are 60 lbs/inch.

 

Ended up scoring a great deal on some used NA HD Bilsteins including FCM shock mounts and FCM bump stops. I know the valving is not ideal, but for the money I'll give it a try. I'm thinking about 450f, 300r 7" springs for both. Does that spring combo seem like decent fit for the NA HDs? I know it is recommended for the NB billys. Will be using NB top hats all around.

 

I ran 450/325 on NA HDs with NB hats and didn't hate them. They did what I wanted. I had extended rear hats for a little more travel, but they aren't a requirement of course.

It's a good compromise setup

 

I'm running the same setup. They work pretty good. I have extended hats all around even with the NA Bilstein shocks.

 

Awesome. Thanks y'all.

 

My bilstein in the front passenger side has its spring contacting the sleeve, I will need to cut the sleeves to 3" to stop it, or raise the cars ride height. It is also possible the isolator at the top came unglued.

 

I've seen this before, some springs don't sit perfectly flat and can cause this. A glued on isolator isn't going to prevent a spring under 100's of lbs. of pressure from moving around. May need to flip the spring end for end if the other end is flatter. You can stand them up on a flat surface and see the issue.

 

I will check and see if the springs are out of whack, they are regular QA1 springs. Probably going to preemptively cut the sleeves while I have the shocks off the car as well, based on how much its scraping I will probably have to cut them to 2.5" or so

 

I had the same issue with hyperco springs in the rear. Didn't really ever figure out how to solve it / what was causing it though- will have a look and see if my springs sit flat too since they're not on the car atm.

 

I suppose that difference is in diameter. 2,5 inch spring has 65mm. I know that some of those sleeves has huge freeplace They are 63mm. It can causing spring bending and damage on your sleeves.

 

Non-coaxial spring perches contribute to spring deflection, which can cause the rubbing some of you experience.
No shock on any car maintains the same angle relative to the suspension member and body during it's stroke. The shock is swinging back and forth. With a body mounted spring, you can understand how it would see bending forces that bow it. A coaxial perch mount my maintains axial alignment with the shock shaft irregardless of the shocks angle to the suspension or body.

Coil springs distort and twist when compressed, even captive between coaxial perches. That's where thrust washers come in. They let the spring unwind as it's compressed without binding. Coaxial perches and thrust washers help isolate the shock shaft from bending loads which would cause stiction. They also allow a more linear spring rate. A typical non-coaxial coilover without thrust washers has a significantly non-linear rate profile. Seen on a graph, it's actually a wavy line with humps and dips. So your 700# spring might be 657# at one part of the stroke then 734# at another part. Any careful tuning attempts with this hardware will be stymied by this non-linearity.

As far as the scraping goes, employing a properly sized helper springs and coupler can eliminate the damaging interference between spring and threads. As you can imagine, engineering a low friction, easy to tune, durable and high performance coilover setup for any car has many unseen pitfalls to deal with.

 

Thanks for the feedback emilio

I took all of the bilsteins off and one of the front ones was blown, so I replaced it with my spare front Bilstein. I also cut the sleeves to 2.5" and added a spring washer between the poly isolator and the top of the spring, as I had extras. If it doesn't help or causes issues I can just cut them in half with scissors and pull them off the shock. No more rubbing, as it is physically impossible for it to rub.


EDIT - Took the spring washers from the top, they were making noise, you don't need them there.

 

I'm pretty sure that the summit house brand racing springs were suspected/suggested of being QA1 springs but just to confirm. I ordered the Summit racing springs as the QA1's are now $50 each and I is poor.
Anyway you can see where they try to clean the QA1 logo off the spring tried to get a pic as best i could but shitty phone/ camera skills/ an its barley visible. there ya go.

 

I'm not going to bother to go back in this forum and look up the posts where people said the Summit Springs were garbage out of ignorance.

 

So ummm are the spring isolators necessary?

I started to tear everything apart and realized I never ordered the isolators.

Put the old suspension back together and wait until next weekend or run her raw with no isolators?

 

I've never run isolators, but couldn't tell you if it adds noise over the delimma bushings, poly diff and engine mounts. Certainly not going to hurt anything.

 

Thanks for the quick response. Yeah not to worried about the NVH. She's going in raw then.

 

Is there any harm or disadvantage in running 700/400 springs on NB Hard-Ss? I currently have 350/275 and it feels far too soft with a noticeable amount of rear bias. In terms of tires, I'm currently on Continental ECSs with hopes to run RS4s or R1Rs in the not-so-distant future. I'm currently running the 949 dual duty alignment and height specs. If any of you have suggestions on better spring rates or better shocks, I'm plenty open to any suggestions.

Thank you in advance for any replies.