I have a friend who races 944 cup in FL. He is offering me the complete suspension off his race car (koni adjustables all around) for 500. It will include the springs on the front struts (425#).
Is this a good deal? will the car be too harsh for the street?
The shocks are approx 2 years old.

 

why are you sitting around? Get them!

- i just bought koni front struts,paragon ride height kit w/ 400's, and KLA rear coilovers w/ 375's for $700- and i got a deal! Oh sure 425 will be stiff but livable- do it!

 

Most of the driving is highway, not too concerned about the stiff ride.
I am going to take a look at them (installed on his car) tonight.

 

The down side the Koni's may be dead or close to it. Consider that in you purchase.

 

I will give them a good once-over. They are not that old. Shouldn't be a problem. They also have adjustable spring perches installed.

 

I'd say "Deal"

If so, you can send them back to Koni NA for rebuilds @ about $145 each for the fronts.

http://www.koni-na.com/distributor.cfm

 

new shocks are 161 each front and 114 each rear.

 

To the other comments that have been made, I will add:

I assume they are the Yellows? 400lbs is about the extent that the valving can handle. An extra 25lbs of rate probably doesn't make much difference, but just thought I would at least throw that out there.

425 isn't too harsh on a car that is close to stock curb weight.

What are you planning on doing to the rear of the car to match the rate of the fronts?

If his car is an 87 or newer, they won't bolt up to your car without some other parts or modifications(spindle bolt pattern is different).

 

They are yellows. The fronts have adjustable spring perches.
The rear shocks will also be Koni Yellows. What else do I need? I have a stock rear sway bar.
The cars are the same model year.
My car is bone stock. This will be the first significant mod.
Will the ride height be different?? (lower I hope)...

 

Ride height will be as low in the front as you want. With the adjustable perches you can dial it up and down.

With 425lbs up front, and the stock t-bars in the back, your car will have massive understeer. You would be running 3X the stock spring rate up there with no change in the back to compensate for that, and these cars already came from the factory with a little understeer dialed in. No rear sway in the world is going to help with that desparity in rates. You will need to up the rear T-Bars to larger ones (30mm? Some one else can help with that, I can't recall correctly and am on a different laptop at the moment that doesn't have my cross-reference chart on it), or go to a coil-over system in the rear in "helper" mode to add some rate (you'd need about 400-425lb springs in addition to your rear t-bars). The problem here is that no matter what you do, you will need to mess with the rear t-bars, because even with coil-overs, you would want to re-index the t-bars to get the ride-height and pre-load correct.

 

Is it the front springs that are going to cause the problem? If so, should I use something closer to stock with the konis?
The car that these are coming off has the rear torsion bar, and bigger sway bars. Not sure about the T-bar.

 

T-Bars = torsion bars.

I'm certain the car that these are coming from has uprated torsion bars, or rear coil-overs plus torsion bars (although if it is a spec car it is probably larger torsion bars).

If you don't plan on messing with the torsion bars on your car, then you will want to purchase some lower rate springs for your fronts, somewhere around the 200-220 range.

 

What are the stock spring rates?

 

They should be around 140ish. You can usually increase the rate to 200-220lbs in the front without messing up the handling characteristics too much. Adding a larger sway in the back will help even things out when you do up the fronts to 200-220. Much more than that, you'll need to start thinking about increasing the rear spring rates, whether by larger t-bars or coil-overs.

 

get the koni's- if they are from a 86 or older car- if not they wont fit!- and put some 200lb springs that are the correct size up front- if they are 2.5" springs up front- get some 200lb hypercoils from paragon-products.com - work very well...