BC Racing RM MA Coilovers VW The Beetle (Strut 54.5)(Torsion Beam) FWD 16C/A5 (12-19) 6/2.5kg.mm

Key Features

• Inverted monotube damper bodies

• Reduced unsprung weight

• 30-way adjustable damping

• Ride height adjustment separate from spring preload

• Camber-adjustable top mounts (depending on model)

• Pillowball upper mount

• Bearing-mounted upper front spring platform

• Dust boot to protect damper seals

• Tapered bottom mount locking collar to prevent collar from working loose

• Custom spring rates available

• All spare parts available with short lead times

• 1-year manufacturer warranty

Which kit is right for you?

RM Series Types

RM-MA | Front = Inverted Shock-Camber Pillowball Top Mount | Rear = Inc Rubber Top Mount or Without Top Mount

RM-MH | Front = Inverted Damper with Pillowball Top Mount | Rear = Inverted Damper with Pillowball Top Mount

Reduced Unsprung Weight

Unsprung weight is lessened by relocating the oil and gas reservoir away from the hub and affixing it to the shell. Unsprung weight is crucial to a car's performance, as a lighter wheel and hub assembly that responds readily to road bumps will offer greater grip when traversing an imperfect road.

Elevated unsprung weight can result in wheel hop over uneven terrain, diminishing ride quality and ultimately handling, as anything hindering the suspension's ability to uphold contact between road and tyre will impair the car's performance.

Reduced Flex

The substantial 42mm damper rod and inverted design provide the inverted damper units with significantly enhanced strength and resistance to side loads. Through minimising flex, the RM inverted units contribute to more consistent steering geometry, yielding more predictable and responsive handling.

Reduced Heat Transfer to the Gas and Oil Reservoir

Any hard driven car with generate a lot of heat within its braking system. This heat is conducted through the hub to the damper unit. By inverting the oil and gas reservoir the oil and gas is moved away from the hub assembly . This reduces the amount of conducted heat being transferred from the braking system to the hub then to the damper and then on to the gas and oil. As the oil and gas is heated its properties change which has a knock on effect on the damping characteristics of the suspension. By keeping the gas and oil temperatures down BC Racing RM coilovers keep damping rates more consistant resulting in better performing suspension and ultimately allowing you to corner faster, which is the bottom line.

Corner Weighting Adjustment

The BC Racing coilovers feature an adjustable lower spring platform, enabling the car to be configured for corner weighting to attain optimal balance and ensure maximum tyre efficiency.

Equal weight distribution on each tyre of an axle is essential, ensuring both front tyres bear equal loadings, as do both rears. This guarantees that each tyre contributes equally during cornering, enhancing overall grip, maximising cornering speed, and reducing lap times.

Optional assister springs are available for purchase, allowing wheel droop adjustment tailored to specific requirements.

Ride Height Adjustable

The ride height is determined by the placement of the coilover bottom mount. This mount can be raised or lowered along the damper body, providing a comprehensive range of adjustments.

Since the ride height is determined by an adjustable bottom mount rather than a spring platform, you maintain complete damper travel regardless of the chosen ride height setting.

Damping Adjustment

The RM Series coilovers are equipped with a 30-way damping adjustment system, which combines both rebound and compression into a single adjuster for simplicity and ease of use. This adjustable feature allows you to fine-tune the vehicle to suit the prevailing conditions.

By tweaking the damping settings for both the front and rear, you can alter the way the car handles. For instance, increasing the damping force at the rear relative to the front will shift the vehicle into a more oversteer-oriented stance.

If you're preparing for drag racing in a rear-wheel-drive car, you'll want the back of the car to squat off the line to maximise weight transfer to the rear tyres and thereby reduce wheel spin. To achieve this, you would soften the rear dampers to allow faster compression. However, if you had the rear dampers set to firm, as you might have them for track racing, the car would be less inclined to squat, reducing traction.

Conversely, if you're aiming for drifting and struggling to break traction or experiencing understeer, stiffening the rear dampers while softening the front ones will reduce rear traction and increase front traction. This will loosen the rear of the car while minimising understeer, shifting the vehicle's handling characteristics more towards drifting than drag racing, road driving, or track racing.

Pillowball (Rose Joint) Upper Mount

Numerous BC Racing RM coilovers are supplied with pillowball upper mounts. These mounts are crafted from aluminium alloy, then anodised and bead blasted to provide a high-quality, durable finish.

The pillowballs themselves are manufactured in Japan. Their solid construction eradicates any flex or play typically found in standard rubber mounts, thus enhancing response and handling.

Camber Adjustment

If your vehicle allows for camber adjustment, BC Racing coilovers automatically incorporate camber-adjustable aluminium pillowball top mounts. These mounts feature the same high-quality Japanese-manufactured pillowball but offer the additional advantage of an adjustable top mount, enabling you to set camber according to your requirements, whether for road, track, or drift purposes.

Corrosion Protection

The damper units are made of black chromed steel to ensure excellent durability, even during the harshest European winters. The aluminium components, such as top mounts and locking collars, undergo anodising, while the steel lower mounts undergo an electrophoretic deposition process followed by powder coating.

A random assortment of steel components, including brackets, dampers, and screws, undergo a salt spray test once a month to assess the quality of the protective processes and ensure that anti-corrosive properties are maintained at the highest possible standard.

High Quality Coil Springs

BC Racing coilovers exclusively utilise top-grade steel for their spring production. These springs are crafted from SAE9254 high-strength, durable cold-wound steel.

The springs undergo compression testing through more than 500,000 cycles, with less than 5% deformation.

Patented Concave Lower Locking Collar

Coilovers use a locking collar to prevent the bottom mount becoming loose. If the bottom mount becomes loose then the damper body can work its way down into the bottom mount so reducing ride height on that one corner which can lead to dangerous handling characteristics. This is a very common problem for coilovers in general.

BC Racing utilise an innovative and patented designed lower locking collar with a bevelled edge that seats into a corresponding bevel in the coilover bottom mount. This vastly increases the surface area that the locking collar works on and so prevents the common and dangerous problem of the locking collars working loose.

High Quality Oil

BC Racing dampers employ a sophisticated shim stack design and high-quality oil to reliably regulate the compression and rebound speed of the damper rod, even under the most demanding conditions.

As the vehicle traverses uneven terrain, the compression and rebound motion of the damper rod heats the oil. Low-quality dampers use inexpensive oil whose properties change with fluctuating temperatures. It's crucial to use high-quality oil capable of maintaining consistent viscosity across a wide temperature range. Once the oil begins to degrade, its characteristics change, resulting in damping alterations that affect the vehicle's handling.

BC Racing ensures the use of only top-quality oil to maintain consistent damping rates not only during immediate usage, such as spirited drives or track sessions but also to maximize long-term durability. This prevents rapid oil degradation over time, significantly extending the operating lifespan of the dampers.

Nitrogen Pressurised Dampers

When you push a damper hard on the track or on high-speed bumpy roads, you can induce aeration in the oil and trigger cavitation. This leads to foaming, which effectively decreases the oil's viscosity and, consequently, diminishes the damping effect of the unit. While high-quality oil helps alleviate this issue, BC Racing takes an additional step by pressurising the dampers with nitrogen.

The nitrogen applies pressure on a floating piston, which in turn exerts a constant pressure on the oil, significantly reducing aeration and thereby enhancing the consistency and quality of damping. The pressurised nitrogen also adds an additional element of effective spring rate to the damper unit.

Bearing Mounted Upper Spring Platform

Because the spring twists as it compresses, it's crucial to minimise stiction between the spring and its seats. If this tension isn't relieved, spring binding can occur, causing the spring rate to effectively alter slightly as the spring compresses and extends. This tension can lead to rapid deterioration of the spring perches and, in extreme cases, can cause the spring platform and locking collars to loosen. This can result in the platform and locking collars 'walking' down the damper, leading to uneven ride height and the risk of the spring dislocating under full damper extension.

Moreover, the friction between the spring and seats affects steering effort as the springs are physically turned with the wheels. This introduces additional unnecessary friction into the steering system, which has a detrimental effect on the vehicle's handling characteristics.

BC Racing's innovative design of a bearing-mounted upper spring platform addresses these issues. By greatly reducing stiction between the spring and its seats, BC Racing units avoid the above problems, thus enhancing the efficiency of the steering system and allowing the spring and damper to function as designed.

Optional Upgrades

Damper adjusting extenders – To simplify the process of adjusting the damping on your BC Racing coilovers without having to remove the parcel shelf each time, we offer pairs of adjuster extenders. These extenders attach to the adjuster knob on the top of the coilover and are available in three lengths: 110mm, 200mm, and 250mm. They can be attached in seconds using a simple grub screw design.

Assister spring perch – If you prefer to run some droop with your coilovers or wish to modify the ride by adding an additional smaller assister spring, the spring perch and assister springs enable you to do so. These springs are available in a wide range of spring rates.

Pillowball top mount – While some applications come with hardened rubber top mounts as standard to ensure the highest quality ride and keep costs reasonable for road use, we often provide a pillowball upgrade for these vehicles. This upgrade allows you to eliminate the flex inherent in even the hardened rubber used by BR Racing, thereby enhancing handling for those seeking the ultimate performance.