Well the suspension parts i bought are all incoming tomorrow from UPS. I was wondering if anyone had advice on things i should look out for before i start removing and installing the new stuff.

I have a few questions as well...

1. What is a good baseline setting for the front Koni struts, full soft? I am using Hypercoik 200lb springs.

2. Same for the rear shocks. I have read that the middle setting is the best, is that right?

3. What are the torque figures for the two bolts at the bottom of the strut (which bolt to the spindle)?

4. Any advice in paricular on setting the front ride height with Paragon's setup? I am looking to lower the front about an inch, 1.5 inches at the most.

5. I also bought the KLA upper strut mounts. What is the torque for the nut which attaches the upper mount to the actual strut?

Thats all i can think of right now...thanks for the help!

 

1., run them on full soft for a while, then gradually work them up to full stiff, they are externally adjustables aren't they? (you'll love those)
2. Rear, depends what you want to do with the car, for autox mine are on full stiff, this way i can use the fronts to dial in and out any understeer/oversteer I want. Tire pressures give fine tuning, for a daily driver, middle will be about as much as you want to go.

Sorry, can't help with the rest, but you are planning to get an alignment after all of this aren't you?
trust me the "marking method" doesn't work!

 

Marking the strut eccentric works reasonably well. Well enough to drive the car around for a little.

Remember, that accuracy needs to be within tenths of a degree, so an alignment afterwards is recommended.

Also, lowering your car 1.5" with a relatively small Spring constant will kill your Al arm's ball joints. You shouldn't go over 200-220# up front with stock rear torsion bars anyways, which, at that rate, will bind your balljoints.

 

1. what spring rate do you have? if you start too soft the car will bounce all over. i agree in general, start soft and go from there. i use 1/2 stiff on the street with 350lb springs
2. are the rear shocks adjustable? KLA? i started with mine at 6 of 12 and worked to 10 of 12 (too stiff), came back down to 7 or 8 of 12
3. about as hard as you can get it, or 50 ft lb (seriously, i don't know)
4.measure the car on level ground before you swap everything and after you have driven it. then you will have a baseline. what spring rate and lenght do you have? it will be a trial and error process. i measured from the wheelarch to the ground, and mine measure about 24 7/8" at all four corners, lowered 1.75" from stock. i want to go lower. you DO need the ball joint kit to adjust for steering geometry changes with the lower springs, if you want to safely drive the car. also. make sure you lower the rear end by readjusting the torsion bars to even the car's weight. it's not really as hard as everybody makes it sound.
5. torque is about 33ft lb i think. i used an impact wrench so it's probably higher than that.

good luck. i have lots of pics to help you out with.

 

Hehe damn, thought i could get away with some white out on everything!

Heres another one i just thought of.

6. I plan to lower the rear as much as possible to even out the ride height with the front. Is it possible to do this with just basic hand tools or am i going to need an impact wrench or something

I edited the first post with the spring rates, which are 200lb springs.

Joseph, the rears are not the KLA coil overs, just Koni adjustable shocks.

Regarding question #5, can i set the torque on that nut without the use of an impact wrench? I have no power tools available at my house.

And regarding the balljoints. I plan to only drive the car like this for maybe 2-3 weeks max. I ship out late next weekend. I get back late July and will probably replace the ball joints a week or two afterwards. Is that accetable? Not to mention i am way past my budget for this upgrade by about $300 already. I need some time to recoupe money!

Edit #2 - Actually with all the ball joint concern (which i previously was not aware of) i think i will try and keep the car closest to stock ride height as possible. This way if i cant get the rear ride height adjusted it wont be a big deal.

 

6. Definately going to need an impact for the eccentric nut. That thing is torqued to like 450 ft/lbs. There is a procedure for doing this on clarks garage, but my reccomendation to you is that you do everything else, then when you take it in for an alignment, just have then do that.

Serge- you are 100% correct, you can mark it and keep it driveable, i drove mine for a couple of months, but it gave me soem freaky tire wear. After a quality alignment the car felt 10x better. In my opinion a quality alignment is one of the best things you can do for these cars.

 

Full soft front and full hard rear for the rebound, that seemed to be the best setting for my 924S when I had that setup.

Remove, clean, and grease your wheel bearings while you're there.

 

agreed 110%. i didn't realize how important it was in handling until mine was aligned. the car can handle better even with stock components and a quality alignment.

 

What exactly would consitute a good alighment? Factory specs?

This car is unforgiving to my bank account right now. On my way home from school a truck hurled a boulder up and it slammed into the upper right portion of my windshield. A nice crack now. Gotta find a place to hopefully stop it from spreading...

 

New question. Curious to know, are bump rubbers required for rear Koni shocks? How are they removed for adjustment?

 

Jon,
I just installed the Paragon kit a couple weeks ago. Mark the two eccentric bolts from the strut to the steering knuckle and try your best to transfer them to the new struts. As mentioned, there is no way to get the bolts transferred just as they were so your alignment will be gone. I haven't been into the alignment shop yet and I can feel it is not right but it is drivable.

The torque values as mentioned in the Paragon tech article correspond to the factory service manual.

Top strut nut, M14, 57lbs
Strut to steering knuckle, M12, 74lbs
Strut bearing nuts, M8, 18lbs

Tech Article Here

The rear can be lowered 1/2 to 3/4" by loosening the eccentric bolt on the torsion arm. As Macfreak mentioned it is tightened to 450lbs and needs an air impact wrench to loosen it. I am going to have the alignment shop lower the rear as much as this bolt will allow and then set the front adjustable height to match.

Good thing you don't have an air wrench. The Koni picturegraph instructions say to not use an air impact wrench to tighten the top strut nut (Joseph - )

My car has 222k miles on it. I presumed the previous owner(s) must have replaced the struts at some point. I was wrong. I leaned the old struts up against the wall and looked over a few minutes later and the strut shafts fell into the struts of their own weight! I was definetly riding on springs only. The konis feel great and the 200lb springs will feel fine.

 

i wasn't aware of that

my impact wrench has 3 torque settings, the first of which corresponds to 60-65 ftlb so IMHO it's fine to do so. if you try to tighten it by hand, there is no way to get close to 57 ftlb because the strut shaft turns from the torque and you can't hold it with the small 10mm nut at the top.

 

Yeah, I rounded off that small (11mm I think) while torquing mine down. I used an O2 sensor socket that is 7/8" for the strut nut. Then I had an 11mm socket with 1/4" drive extension out the 3/8" drive hole of the O2 socket. The 1/4" drive extension was then adapted to 3/8" to fit my torque wrench and I turned the O2 socket with a wrench where it has flats on the outside. Got all that! Anyway it can be done although with rounded sides on the 11mm

Thats cool that your impact wrench has adjustable torque so you are probably ok.

 

Can anyone verify this hardware order for the top of the strut?



So basically from top to bottom it would be the 22mm nut, washer, strut mount, spring perch, washer, then the threaded shaft. (i am aware i am missing the bump rubber and plastic ring from the picture). Is this correct?

I have mostly everything together and setup..just need to take a ride to my friends house to utilize his bench vice so i can torque the strut casing to the insert correctly.

 

On my car it is WASHER, SPRING PERCH. The washer keeps the spring perch below the shoulder transition from the smooth to the threaded portion of the shaft. That gave me clearance for the spring perch to miss the strut mount.