just get some turbo sways, 200lb front hypercoils and drop the rear and front down. Worked well for me.

 

My car is lowered to turbo cup specs, with the turbo cup progressive rate springs in the front, and 28.8mm tbars in the back. should I be worried about my balljoints? I always assumed it would be fine since the factory turbo cup cars ran this ride height.

 

You'll still want to check them periodically. The turbo cup series cars also had the luxury of a parts bin and frequent replacements.

 

Would a balloint failure realy be as catastrophic as I am imagining? Does not sound like fun...

 

The Koni coil over kit is a very cost effective way to get the car lowered. But keep in mind that since you'll be tracking your car, it is imperative that you determine what to do with your A-arms. I went the expensive route there, and got the Kokeln A-arms. At $1500.00, they are pricey. But I don't have to worry about the ball joint binding and cracking my a-arms anymore. Plus, between the monoball everything on the Kokeln A-arms, PLUS the Racer's Edge camber plates up top, I can get like -180 degrees of camber, if I so desire! (Kidding). I actually run a quite modest -2 degrees of camber, since my car does see a fair bit of street driving...

But as with Tifo, my car's lowered about two inches below factory height. My roofline is even with my friend at work's Miata roofline. I can't take the car to an automatic car wash as the body will hit the guide rails on the floor. You can do stuff like that when you don't need to worry about the a-arms.

31mm hollow torsion bars have the same effective rate as 30mm solid units.
Not sure if I would notice a difference between the two... Probably not worth the extra $$...

-Z-man.

 

Its bad, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmkay.

Best case scenario is that you just tear up your fender when your wheel goes back into it and you safely make it to a stop. Worse case is you die in a horrible crash where the car ends up in a little unrecognizable ball of twisted steel and zuffenhausen plastic.

 

I run the same setup as XSBoost. 200lb front springs, stock torsion bars in the rear. Koni's and 951 M030 sways. The car is dropped about 1-inch all around. Car handles great and is still comfortable enough to be my daily driver. I also use the longer ball joint pins from Rennbay to compensate for the lowered ride height as i still use a relativley low spring rate.

Id like to go with stiffer springs, but am hesitant to mess around with the torsion bars. I ran for a long time with the front lower than the rear (rear at stock height, front lowered about an inch) and the car had very strange handling characteristics at the limit (it would oversteer without warning). Once i evened out the ride height it was just a matter of messing around with the adjustment on the Koni's to get it feeling neutral.

Be careful with lowering your car. I find it gets addictive. I started out about 1/4 inch lower than stock, which gradually made me want to go lower. It was then 1/2 lower than stock. Then i wanted more... and now its about 1 inch lower than stock. I was actually able to get about a 1 inch drop when i adjusted the spring plate on the rear, i got close to 15/16's when measuring between the center of the wheel and the fender lip. I want to go even lower, but my car already grounds out on a few areas around town, especially with the front lip i just put on that lowers the front clearance by another 3/4 of an inch.

The 80's German mantra ... low and slow! Well atleast in the case of a 8v n/a 944.

 

hmmm maybe the turbo cup springs are stiff enough to prevent allot of binding. I know they are progressive, but does anyone know the specs of the cup springs?

 

Ryan - IIRC, they are somewhere around 300-350 at this max rate.

That said, you really don't want to lower your car without doing something with your A-arms. To exapand on what Tifosiman stated, the following can happen:
1. The ball joint pops out of it's place, and miraculously lands back in the A-arm. No harm done (yet).
2. The ball joint pops out of it's place, and lands infront of the A-arm. Difficult to steer a car without one of the sides not being in the A-arm. Damage to front fender will occur as the body drops upon the wheel.
3. The ball joint pops out of it's place, and lands behind the a-arm. The suspension collapses taking out the whole side of the car.

I don't play the odds, but it is clear that those aren't the best odds. Cue Mr. Eastwood: Are ya feeling lucky, punk?

-Z

 

I guess my PS balljoint is about due then...

 

So how low would you have to lower it to cause the ball joint to bind? I'd like to go lower with 200# welts Koni Yellows, and stock rear. I don't know how much lower than stock it is now so I'm not to sure where to start. Does anyone have any kind of specs as to factory ride height and whatnot?