Hi guys, although I've had my car for 11 years, I haven't touched the suspension on it. I just did my first autocross last weekend and I'm addicted now. Ended up 5th and even a beat a well sorted rally car with a seasoned driver. I was blown away by how much fun I had and how well I did. My suspension is completley stock. My car is an '83 with 216,000 miles on the clock. What I really would like to do is go through the suspesion and freshen it up a bit. However I just signed up for another event in a couple of weekends and I'd like to possibly do new struts and shocks before then as my current ones are shot.

My question is primarily this, with the front struts on the early 944's, are they all rebuildable? Also, any recomendations would be appreciated. I'd like to keep it simple and bang for the buck is important to me. This is for a virtually stock car with the exception of som Cup II replica wheels and a stripped interior. I apologize if this has been beaten to death, but I did do a search and didn't have much luck. Thanks!

 

There are more expert opinions than mine - but I can answer one of your questions. The early struts will accept new struts without "too much" trouble. If bolts aren't rusty or stuck, then it should be a fairly simple job to put new struts in (Boge / Sachs are OE) and increase your spring rates relatively inexpensively (see Paragon Products). That might be a simple first step before going fully adjustable, yada yada.
Alignment will be necessary, though... so you might want to consider replacing bushings and bearings (200K+! Congrats!).

 

A effective, yet relativley cheap suspension setup that works well with autocross would be this in my opinion.

Rear:

Koni Yellow shocks for the rear or Bilstiens. Both are valved stiffer than the stock struts. The Koni offer some dampening adjustablilty while the Bilstiens do not. Some people prefer one of the other. Its up to you really.

18mm 944 Turbo sway bar or a 19mm M030 sway bar. The 18mm bar you can probably find for less than $50, the 19mm bar has some adjustability but is going to cost about $200.

Front:
Again, Koni or Bilstien strut inserts, whatever floats your boat here.

Springs, i would put in something like a 200lb spring at the least and a 225lb spring at the most. You have the option of going with the Weltmeister lowering springs or something with a bit more fine tuning ability like the adjustable ride height sleeves. The later is better for fine tuning ride height but costs more than just the lowering springs. If you decide to lower, you can even the ride height front and rear with the camber eccentric bolt on the trailing arms in the rear. This can potentially still leave your ride height uneven with the lowering springs.. with the adjustable ride height sleeves, you can fine tune the front to match the rear.

Any of the 944 Turbo sway bars.. you have a few options here. 24mm, 25.5mm 26.8mm and a 30mm.

The first three you can find for less than $50, while the 30mm will run you closer to $300. If you have any interest, i have a 24mm bar for sale.


This is a relativley cheap setup that can be done for under $1000. It will provide a significant difference over whatever is on your car now. If you want a cheaper route, i also have a set of complete early offset struts with Boge struts inthem, less than 8k miles on the struts (there were put in about 5 years ago).

 

youll want to match sway bars- so 30mm w/ 19mm full stiff- 26.5mm w/ 18mm rear- or 25.5 w/ 18mm rear - i think the 24mm fronts may have had a 16mm rear(stock early turbo bars)<--- i have these fs $100 for both...

 

Jon,

The concentric adjustment on the rear trailing arms, I've heard of this before, and I'll do a search right now for it, but I never understood where/what this was. A friend of mine told me that there was no adjustment on the back so I've been confused on this for some time.

My car does have a rear sway bar, for reference, do you know what size came on the early 944's? I actually do have a set of H&R 250lb lowering springs but never have installed them as I didn't want to upset the levelness of the car. Also, assuming that everything comes off cleanly, will the Koni or Bilstein inserts swap right in for the fronts?

If I go with a 250lb set of springs in the front, will it adversely effect the handling with the stock torsion bars out back?

I'm going to surf around a bit for some used parts now, I might be interested in ths sway bar depending on what i find I need.

 

The trailing arm trick will give you roughly .5-.75 inches of drop depending on where it was set originally. Mine gave me just under 1-inch, others report less than a half inch. TechSession has a good article on adjusting it. Just note you will need a very powerful impact gun or a very large breaker bar to get the bolt loose on each side. Its very important to get the ride height set as equal as possible. If you put in lowering springs that drop 1.5 inches in the front and can only drop the rear .50 inches with the camber eccentric.. its going to have a very nasty habit of oversteer without warning. I ran like this for about 8 months before i got around to dropping the rear. The difference now between front and rear is a little more than .25 inches.

http://www.tech-session.com/kb/index...x_v2&id=62&c=4

Your early car probably came with a 14mm rear bar. The front bar is probably a 21.5 or a 23mm.

250lb springs are usually the most everyone recommends going with in the front while keeping stock torsion bars. Personally i would not go with anything more than 225lb springs. I have 200lb front and stock torsion bars in the rear still. The car handles very natural with my particular setup (take a look at the link in my sig).

Something else to consider when dropping more than 1.25 inches in the front is addressing the ball joint geometry. More food for thought!

 

I'm trying to learn the suspension game as well. Will the torsion bars need to be reindexed if you change out the rears with koni yellows or bilstines?
-Scott

 

Reindexing the torsion bars is only necesary if you plan to do serious lowering of the car, say more than .5 inches. They need to be replaced + reindexed if you want to go with a bigger torsion bar in the back.

Its not necesary to reindex if you just change the struts or shocks. However if you go with something like a coil-over in the rear that is a different story.

The torsion bars are next on my list of things to tackle for the suspension...not looking foward to doing the job!

 

Hey to da UP!

Yeah, I'd be looking to do new bushings as well - put them in my '82, made a big improvement in ride/handling - like new again! A-arms front and rear bushings, plus strut mounts. Biggest PITA is just pressing out the old ones, having the new ones pressed in - easiest to have a shop do it for you.

 

I'd like to keep the ride height stock for now, so I don't think I'll be installing those springs this season (for lack of getting in and out of my driveway for nothing else). I would like to lower the rear a tad though as with the interior removed it sits higher then stock, which seemd a higher then the front before anyway.

Another consideration is that with the different wheels I have more push then stock (7.5 front, 9 rear) and need to take that into account with the rear sway bar as well. From what I understand, a smaller rear sway bar dials a bit more oversteer in.

Shocks and swaybars might be the first step for me here, maybe even just shocks for right now. The season is almost over here and soon the car will be back in hibernation for 6 months(the only bummer about where I live).

 

Allright, another Michigander! I spend alot of time at a cottage I have in Leelanau County in the summers, I grew up in that area, so I'm kind of a downstater at heart(all my Yooper friends remind me of this constantly) haha.

The only bushings I replaced have been on my front sway bar and that was about 8 years ago now, so I'm thinking that going through everything will make some nice improvements. Again, probably a next spring project though. Unfortunately I don't have a garage or shop up here in Marquette and do the work when I can at the pole barn at the cottage. Kind of a pain to drive 5 hours to wrench though.

 

I got an inch lower in the rear with the trailing arm eccentrics. Those nuts are on there EXREMELY tight.
I wound up using a Dremel with a cutting blade to split them, then replace them with new ones.
Put Ground Control struts with camber plates in the front. used the ride height adjustment to lower it an inch in the front. Koni yellows all the way around, 250 lb springs in the front. Weltmeister stage II
sways front and rear. Rennbay ball joint kit, Weltmeister bushings. Then had a really good 4 wheel alignment done. I'm extremely happy with the way it handles. A great setup for street / track.

 

Great tips so far everyone, I'm actually taking notes on this. Does anyone have a photo of the concentric bolt? I'm still a little grey on how it adjusts the trailing arms.

 

On the TechSession link, it is labled the "eccentric" bolt.

They mention you need a funky sized 32mm or 34mm thin wrench to make adjustments. If you are simply dropping the car as far as possible all you need to do is loosen the bolt with the suspension unloaded. The suspension will sorta drop right into the lowest position. The wrench is only needed for fine tuning. If you do need the wrench, goto a local bicycle shop and get the proper size headset wrench.

 

Actually, I'm of a different opinion - go with a +1 on the rear sways. IE: match a front stock Turbo sway with an M030 19mm rear sway. Why? Our cars were designed with lots of understeer dialed into the suspension. So upgrading to 'matched' sway bars will help reduce body lean, it won't really help in the handling department. Going with a "+1" sway bar in the rear will.

For many years, I can with a stock front sway on my 944S2 (Same as a turbo front swaybar) and a 19mm M030 rear swaybar. My current setup is a M030 front swaybar with a Weltmeister 22mm adjustable rear sway. My Welt sway is actually set to full soft since I've got some beefy torsion bars between the wheels!

-Z-man.