[rl968]

Had my car lowered by Provost Motorsports the other day. Those guys did a great job, looks and drives great! It will get a good test on July 8 - DE @NJMSP Thunderbolt. I'm running 255/40/17 in rear in case anyone is wondering. Here are some before and after pics...



Before <img src="/forum/images/smilies/968/sad.gif" class="smilie" alt="" /> :





After <img src="/forum/images/smilies/968/rock.gif" class="smilie" alt="" /> :

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[RS Barn]

Looks great.

Hard to tell without driver on board but it looks like a bit more negative camber on front would be welcome.

Do you have camber plates on front?

Pete

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[flash]

i think a lot of this depends on the rest of the setup



it looks perfect to me in the top shot, if it has big enough sway bars

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[rl968]

No camber plates or upgraded sway bars...yet. The July DE will hopefully give me an indication of the next steps (not to mention that I am still recovering from sorting this car out with HG the latest repair a month ago, just put a new steering pump in yesterday and the alternator is about to be replaced as it sounds like bearings are going...gotta love 18 year old cars with 137k on the clock!)



I think I'm at max neg camber on front. I'm sitting on koni 30s in the rear, took rear coils off as they were too long (8") and koni shocks w/450 lb springs in the front. Either of you have an M030 front sway bar handy or know where to get one?? Max did a nice job on this and Robbie is great at prepping these cars for the track, you should see is 924 if you haven't already.



I now have near new 250lb rear springs for sale if anyone is interested...make me an offer.

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[DaveN]

I'ld like to lower my car too but don't want to get race crazy. Did they pull the torsion bars or do this strickly with springs/dampers and concentric bolts?

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[flash]

i just lowered Blau's M030 car - dropped it a good inch - the thing is though that he had threaded collars up front, so it was easy - if you have the standard struts and springs, you're stuck

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[rl968]

The torsion bars are still in, they were re-indexed. Eccentric bolt is pretty much useless, adjusting mine only gave me like 1/2-3/4 inch max. Before the re-index, I was sitting at 26.5" from floor to middle of tire well, now I'm at 23.75".

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[flash]

if you are on 25" O.D. tires, and have not modified the suspension pick up points, 23.75" puts you well below ground on the roll center - that will cost you in the corners - it will "feel" more stable, but will actually scrub speed - been there - done that

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[rl968]

pilot sport cups, so yes 25" OD. I consider the upcoming July 8 DE a "fine tuning" operation so we''ll see how much improvement we've made. Sway bars are likely in my near future if I can find an M030 for the front. Max is my guide so I'm pretty confident we'll get this thing right. Next DE will be in late Sept at WG.

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[flash]

yeah - like i said, at that height, if the suspension pickup points are unchanged, the roll center is below ground, so you're going to lose speed in the corners, probably chew up tires because the camber change will be so dramatic, and it will be far more subject to bump steer - i made this mistake with other cars before, which is why i then learned about suspension geometry - there is definitely such a things as "too low" - it's not just about center of gravity - usually i draw out the suspension, and set the height from there, but i didn't do it until after i tested different heights on my blue 968 and i figured out where the minimum ride height is from that, only to confirm it later on the drawings



it's going to "feel" great, but not be as fast as it could be at the limits



best of luck

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[Cloud9...68]

Is the ride height the only thing you've changed since your last DE? If so, you'll be able to accurately assess the impact, one way o the other, of the ride height change.



Too bad it's so difficult to change the ride height with the torsion bars in place. I've just gone through my rear suspension, and just taking the spring plate covers on and off, never mind going through the actual indexing procedure (I removed my torsion bars) is a [size="4"]ROYAL PAIN [/size][size="2"](sorry for shouting)[/size].

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[flash]

lol - that is exactly what got me onto the slippery slope of suspension development of this car - i didn't want to deal with the torsion bars, so i removed them - it has been a long and arduous journey ever since - i went through all the horrendous things like gas shocks, spring rates, ride height/geometry complications, and all of that, finally to get to a place where i like the feel of the car, but am still dealing with a noise



suffice it to say that i learned an awful lot about the super beetle rear and rabbit front suspensions, and see an endless string of repetition of mistakes

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[Cloud9...68]

I hope my journey doesn't end up being as arduous as yours. I would hope that between my goals being more single-purpose than yours (primarily to get around the track as fast as possible), and the fact that so many people have come before with this exact goal with this exact car (and its predecessors) will make things more straightforward.

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[pure&amp;simple]

>> there is definitely such a things as "too low"



What were the findings of your suspension analysis? What's the min ride height without messing up the geometry too badly?



My understanding is that over-lowering the car makes it more susceptible to body roll, which is often countered with stiffer sway bars. And that, outside the sweet spot of intended suspension geometry, going over bumps can cause undesirable toe change (a.k.a. bump steer), which can be dealt with by installing a bump steer kit that modifies the suspension geometry. Apart from that, what else goes wrong?

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[bombfactory]

I forget what the ideal ground-to-top-of-fender-lip target measurement should be (25"? Anyone?). I'm no suspension expert - defer to Flash on this - but from your pics it looks like the car could come down maybe 1/2" in the front and go up maybe 3/4" in the rear.



Re front M030 swaybar - you may have trouble finding one. They are currently NLA, and everyone - even Porsche Germany - is out of them. I got lucky and scored the last one Paragon had when I searched for one a few months ago. Prepare for outrageous eBay prices on them soon!

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