i have a 1998 a4 b5 2.8 quattro, recently i got into driving offroad.
when i look up springs all i can find is lowering kits, so my question is,
where can i find some springs to stiffen my suspension and maybe raise it by an inch?
is there a website where i put in the kind of springs i want and they have a pair to match tge specs?
what kind of springs do i need?
i know nothing about springs so i need a lot of clarification for this, thank you

 

If you want to stiffen the ride and raise it up, you're going to be looking for coilovers. To get anything with reasonable quality and damping, you're going to spend some big money.

Another option to stiffen and maintain ride height, will be swapping for S4 springs and struts. You should be able to pick up a set of low mile equipment for pretty cheap. Ride height will be about the same, slightly lower.

 

I believe coil overs and RAISING THE CAR are two mutually exclusive terms. They typically drop the car 1 inch at the highest setting.

 

What m3 armand said. Coil overs are not your solution. In fact it is difficult to really say what would give you any lift on these cars. The design of the suspension is set up so that if you want any lift to happen, you would need to incorporate a longer tubed shock and possibly couple it with a heavier duty spring to make it raise the car. It would be way easier to show you honestly. I don't know of any companies selling an off the shelf kit like that. Also just changing to heavier duty springs won't give you any height. It will just make your car squat less under heavy acceleration, squat less when you have a lot of weight in the car, and in general will make the car ride more firmly. Not worth it at all to swap them, because of how tedious the process is. Sorry champ. If you wanted to make a rally car I would say firmer stock height shocks with heavy duty springs. Low and fast.

 

Does your car have the OEM sport suspension? If so, you could raise the ride height a bit by swapping to non-sport shocks and springs.

If you're already on non-sport suspension you might try using spring spacers. I ran in a Rally Cross event at Summit Point last weekend and several of the guys there suggested this method because its cheap, easy, and effective. You can keep your OEM suspension for driving on the road, then when you want to drive off road you jack up each corner with the wheel still on and shove these rubber shims into the spaces between the coils of each spring. This serves to both stiffen the effective spring rate and raise the ride height. Then when you're done playing 4x4, jack up the car again and pop them out to get your OEM ride quality back for the drive home.

We used these on circle track race cars back when I was a tire monkey in high school and NASCAR used (not sure if they still do) similar technology at one time. With something like this, you could buy four of them and raise your whole car an inch for less than the cost of a tank of gas.

 

I work at a fabrication shop for windows, so i have access to some tools to make stuff.
Im thinking about going with a "C" Shaped piece of aluminum with a bolt attaching the open side together after installed.

How large should i go? Is it 1:1 Metal size: Height increase

 

With the way the front suspension is designed I would seriously worry about lifting the car, at full extension there are some pretty crazy angles in the control arms and tie rods. Jack the front up and take the wheels off, now have someone turn the steering wheel while you look at the suspension. Every bushing flexes and the ball joints look like they're ready to pop out, combine that with offroad beating and you'll likely end up stuck somewhere with one of your wheels pointed in a completely different direction.

 

I'd also worry about topping out the struts if you just put heavier springs on the stock struts and go thrashing around on dirt roads. Maybe you would need to rig up some kind of limit strap like dune buggies have?

Do rally car struts have some kind of internal bump stop so topping out doesn't blow the struts? Or do they not care since the struts get replaced frequently anyway?