And I thought this car was "finished". Well, over a year after the 1.9 conversion, it had been sitting for a few months (long story). One brake disc got rusted to the point it wouldn't recover on its own. Also, now and then a difficult to diagnose *clunk* could be heard from the front end, while the car still had lots of body roll in the corners. Enough excuses to have some more fun with this car ; this is the right time to upgrade to GTI front suspension!

So when a complete 309 GTI front suspension with brakes, struts, subframe and everything popped up for sale on the forum, I didn't think twice. I talked the seller down €30 and spent that on a better set of droplinks. One of the pair that were on the subframe when I bought it was toast. I already had the GTI brakes, but an extra set would come in handy with the car currently suffering from one rusted and one warped brake disc.

One beautiful day I removed the old suspension. If you look closely, you can see I had welded a bracket onto the old subframe for BE gearshift linkage, which was necessary when I fitted the 1.9 engine without upgrading the suspension at the same time. I will call this a bisexual subframe as the MA bracket is still on as well ;) Next picture shows what you have left after removing it. At the top you can still see the oil pan and the gearbox. Just behind the pan is the bottom engine mount. There is no need to support the engine during this operation as it relies on the other two mounts for vertical support. On the floor pan you can see two white spots where the subframe was bolted to. Next to the exhaust there's the shift linkage. Note placement of the jackstands, of course there was no subframe to put them under.

What's the difference?

XL and other non-GTI suspension have the anti-rollbar serving as the rear half of the lower arm, locating it front to back. There's a lot of flex in the set of large rubbers that hold it all together, and as it moves up and down, the anti-roll bar end moves around a bit too, front to back. The GTI suspension on the other hand, has a true wishbone type construction, with two lower arm mounting points on the subframe as opposed to only one. These lower arms have no choice but move up and down only. The GTI anti-rollbar is separate, connected to the struts only by the all too familiar droplinks.

For those who want to know all the details : Those droplinks may become troublesome now and then, but they make themselves useful too: they make the bar twist about 70% more for the same body roll, adding a lot to roll stiffness. Why they make the bar twist more is easy to see if you consider how the lower arm on the XL suspension moves up and down. It acts like a lever arm, for every inch the strut (balljoint) moves up, the anti-rollbar end only moves up about 0.6". With the GTI suspension, the rollbar end follows the full strut movement through the droplinks. I will update this page later with anti-rollbar thickness measurements. They look quite similar in the pictures, suggesting that Peugeot upped the roll stiffness a LOT for the GTI models. About time, I'd say, after driving the XL 1.9 on standard suspension for a while and always wondering when it would roll over completely ;)

Of course standard GTI springs and shocks are also a bit stiffer than standard XL fitment. The springs are a little thicker, but nothing shocking; the difference I measured would be good for only about 10% stiffer spring rate.

Problems

As others have said before me, the GTI subframe with struts and everything bolt right into non-GTI Pugs as long as you have a BE gearbox (If you don't, you may have to add a bracket on top of the subframe for the gearshift linkage. The TU lower engine mount bracket bolthole might be missing as well, although it was there on my GTI subframe. I've seen some variation). Everything else bolts right on, including the XL steering gear. Of course you will have to do an alignment after an operation like this. In my case I had to turn the left tierod some, the rest was fine. This means front track is the same, any difference is in the wheels only. This one turn of the tierod would have cause excessive tire wear though, so please check alignment whenever you swap major suspension parts. Even a simple tape measure check is better than nothing.

The only concern is the stabilizer droplinks rubbing the brake line or its bracket. Some have problems with it, others don't. I took a few pics of the problem. On my 309 the droplinks did not touch the brake line brackets. Not even close. But at full lock it did rub the brake hose itself. I solved that temporarily by bending the brake line bracket a little to the front, moving the hose closer to the chassis. I may end up moving the bracket later and fitting longer GTI brake hoses, that go along the outboard side of the strut.

Brakeline interference.

These pics were taken at full droop, so the balljoint can't get any closer to the brake line than this. The bottom right pic shows the droplink rubbing the brake hose at full lock. On the pic above that, you can just see the bracket that holds the GTI brake hose on the other side of the strut, which is probably the right way to do it anyway.

Driving impression

Superb! Much better. A lot less body roll, and despite what you would expect from more roll stiffness at the front only, understeer did not increase. Maybe it even decreased. Feels a bit stiffer, much more responsive. Exactly what you need with a more powerful engine. It seems to be a bit lower as well. The front wheels really tuck in now, despite 185 tire width, but that's the price you pay for sheep's clothing. On the way home, half under the bright light of a petrol station I tried to take a picture of that with my flashless camera: