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The Knowledge #2 – Suspension – Clio 172 (FF and Cup)

RenaultSport Clio 172 Cup Suspension Knowledge

There are three types of people (for the sake of this article) who look to lower their car:

a) An individual who wishes to lower the car to “look better”
b) The individual who wishes to make the car handle better and to get these benefits on the road and on the occasional trackday.
c) The regular racer or trackday user who essentially wants to simply go quicker.

Some Important things that you might want to know:

Bump = When a spring compresses or is forced to compress
High Speed Bump = Fast compression of the spring examples of which could be when the car is driven over kerbs or on the road over holes or uneven tarmac.
Low Speed Bump = Slow compression on the spring examples of which could be when the car is acceleration, braking or when cornering.
Rebound = When a spring expands

I am going to try and cover the questions that all of the above user types will ask about.

a) Lowering your 172 to look better

The options that I would recommend would be Eibach Proline spring kit or the Eibach Sportline springs. The way to identify the two different Eibach spring types for the Clio 172/182 is that the Proline springs are Black, and the Sportline Springs are red (obviously if you don’t have the eyesight of an eagle to spot it when you glance under the car)

Eibach make high quality and well respected springs for both road and race cars, If you simply wish to lower your car 20-30mm and to retain the standard dampers then go for this option. I would not suggest that the Apex springs route is not good idea at all by the way – you will tend to find that the springs are too short – they make the car look nice and low, but at the expense of destroying your standard Renault clio 172 dampers. If you wish to go a bit lower that than the 20-30mm drop from the Eibach Proline Springs, then I would suggest to stick with Eibach as a brand but to go for the Sportline spring kit instead.

The best setup in my opinion (without going to coilovers) is the Koni Adjustable Damper Kit, with the Eibach Sportline spring. For day to day belting about on A&B roads, it firms up the handling and turn in enough to warrant the extra that you will spend over the Renault parts. This setup can obviously be improved by adding more camber both to the front and rear – using camber shims under the rear stub axles, and eccentric camber bolts on the front struts. Another improvement could be to consider a Whiteline Anti-Roll Bar.

Link to our blog about Camber Bolts and Camber Shims
Link to our blog about the Whiteline Anti-Roll Bar

b) Wanting to improve the handling on a day to day road car / occasional track car

In essence there is only one word to describe what you require if you are using a car to its limits on the road or track – Coilovers.

If you are not prepared to go to a coilover set-up then the Koni Adjustable damper set-up that I have mentioned earlier on in this article is the best bet.

An important point that I will make here is that if you are going to buy coilovers, then please do the sensible thing, and don’t just slap them on the car measuring the sill heights or whatnot – actually do it properly and put the car on some scales and get it corner-weighted – it makes all the difference.

Coilover units are essentially a racing component, I would rather concentrate on describing to you the best way of setting up a car rather than describing what components are – If you don’t know what a coilover unit is – then think of it like this…

A standard factory car will normally come with a MacPherson (strut) damper and spring as a seperate component

A coilover damper has the spring as an integral part of the damper, and is normally height adjustable on platforms that raise and lower the spring. A high quality coilover damper normally will have the facility to adjust the damping and rebound.

My recommendations are as follows for the 172 and 172 Cup:

If you are an occasional trackday user there are a few choices:

H&R Coilover Kit – A Bilstein Monotube coilover damper with H&R Springs
Bilstein B14 Coilover Kit – Obviously a Bilstein Monotube damper, but with Eibach Springs
YozzaSport PSS10 Kit – Adjustable Bilstsin Monotube design with Eibach Springs
KW Variant 2 – Coilover kit with adjustable damping

My personal recommendation: KW Variant 2

A perfect damper for belting about the Countryside of a weekend, with the damping wound off, it is very similar to the setup of something like the Clio 182 Trophy. As soon as you get to a track you can firm up the suspension no end. It sharpens up the response of the whole car within about 2 minutes – there is no scrabbling about on the floor, its simply a pop the bonnet open, and pop the boot open and rotate the adjusters on the tops of the struts.

Other Options Worth Considering

Both the H&R and Bilstein B14 coilover kits are well worthwhile looking at, if I were to pick one over the other the Bilstein is my preferred kit. I think the Bilstein kit is damped a little better for the 172 Cup than the 172 – its just a little bit lighter and I think it helps. We can also source a Group N Ohlins damper kit for the Ragnotti (Clio 172 Cup) but this will obviously fit the 172 as well, you may need to sit down prior to getting a price from us, as they are about £500 a corner for the dampers alone.

There are also some other dampers and companies out there that do coilovers for the 172/182 that might be worth a look; KW Variant 1 – Non Adjustable Koni coilover dampers are available for the 172, but I don’t rate them compared to the variant 2, the Bilstein or the H&R would be a much better bet. Others such as AST Suspension are available, and you will find that FK do a few kits, but to be honest, all of the kits that I have seen outside the ones I have mentioned are either leaking, corroded, poorly damped or so on. GAZ Suspension is one of those that I have put on a few cars for customers and basically have had nothing but problems with, so haven’t used them again. LEDA are another of those companies – they look great on paper, but we have had fitting problems, and leaking dampers – this was pre them going bust here in the UK. They may have improved, I wouldn’t spend my own nor a customers cash finding out however, as I am perfectly happy with the suppliers that we have chosen whilst testing vehicles in the past.

The most important part of getting the dampers fitted really has to be the setup – I have sold so many kits to people who are getting someone they know who
has fitted them once before to fit them to their car that I am no longer suprised by it. Corner-Weighting and setting up the camber and tracking of the car is as important as picking good dampers – If you fit coilovers to a car the difference is immense – if you then have the car set up the difference can feel as much again in terms of the performance.

c) Pure Performance – No Compromise Suspension for Racing and Trackday Cars

My advice to you if you are racing a Clio 172 does depend on exactly what type of racing you are doing – there are a few important things to consider:

a) Are you running a RenaultSport Clio 172 Cup Racecar? If so – you have completely different suspension units to the roadcar. The hub assembly and lower mounts are from a Laguna I believe.
b) What suspension restrictions does your championship impose
c) What is your budget
d) What kind of on-going maintenance costs can you suffer – I.E. Tyre wear / bent rear stub axles, tracking being knocked out of line are all things that need repairing quickly
e) Are you going to set the car up before every event / race and if so – what equipment do you have or are you prepared to invest in?

I will try and answer as much of this in a few paragraphs and then get to the specifics as soon as possible.

If you have a RenaultSport Clio Cup Racer from 1999 (I think they were numbered 0-100 – I will check and clarify this later) as they were these test mules for the cars that then followed to be run in the rest of Europe. The later European cars were fitted with an improved Sadev 6-speed sequential box, and a revised rear Bilstein damper. If you are offered a UK Clio Cup car it will have been around in one shape or form since 1999 and will have been fitted with the update packages from R-Sport (RenaultSport’s trackside support for the BTTC events, run by John Millet – Formerly of Radbourne Racing) If you by parts through Rsport expect to pay a standardised price, as they are the sole importers of all of the parts that you will find on the Clio Cup cars. Suspension wise, what have you got? – you have got Bilstein coilovers units front and rear. If you have a silver rear damper, you have the slightly earlier dampers – these were replaced by a more bulky revised black damper in around 2003/2004. The dampers are reasonably robust, but should be re-built regularly to keep them in top notch performance. This is available through ourselves for around £75 per damper + delivery – replacement parts are an extra.

For a pair of new rear Bilstein Coilover Rear dampers you are looking at a cost of around about £850.

Springs on the Clio Cup race cars are all Eibach – and are called the Clio Cup Spring – Obviously variations are available as an aftermarket part, as the single make championship had standardised parts.

Other Race/Trackday Cars

There are plenty of other Clio 172′s that have been converted into race cars – many running suspension such as the Bilstein B14 kits, but… the important difference between the road kits that you can buy and the kit that you will need to be running to make the most of your car is that on a road coilover kit, all manufacturers (maybe with the exception of AST) use a standard rear damper – they use a much smaller spring and an adjustable platform to lower the rear. I would suggest in most instances that you would be best advised to forget about the rear set-up that comes with the off the shelf kits, and to focus on utilising a clio cup racer rear damper – around Brands Hatch you will see an improvement of around about 1.5-2 seconds a lap simply through changing from the standard damper to a rear coilover. The car is transformed, with the levels of grip improving tremendously. Paired with a good set-up and corner weight and sensible camber you will see some great improvments even on road tyres. (we tested quite a lot on road tyres as this is what many of the trackday users would run the cars on)

If the RenaultSport rear coilover is out of your budget – I would recommend again either the Bilstein B14 Kit or the KW Variant II kit that we have discussed earlier, however I would strongly point you in the direction of a whiteline rear anti-roll bar to firm up the rear as much as possible.

I hope this covers as many of the questions that you have in as short a time as possible. If there is anything that I have missed – feel free to leave me a message or a comment and I will try to oblige.

Tags: b14, bilstein, camber, camber bolts, camber shims, clio 172 coilovers, clio 172 suspension, eibach, eibach proline, eibach sportline, h&r, KW coilovers, kw suspension, pss10, pss9