What is the most cost-effective way to have adjustable ride height? Rear ride height is slightly adjustable with the factory torsion bars according to Clark's, but how useful is 1/2" of difference up or down?

 

Adjustment can be made on the rear with the spring plates. You will get anywhere from 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch. Adjustment is fairly simple.. you dont need the large wrench if you plan on dropping the rear all the way, as soon as you loosen the nuts the entire suspension will settle into the lowest position. The wrench is only needed if you want to make fine tune adjustments.

You will need a very large breaker bar or a fairly powerful impact wrench. to get each nut loose...they are very tight. Retorque to 181 ft-lbs.



There is no way to adjust the front ride height unless you have M030 or Turbo S factory suspension (i think). You can either go with lowering springs in the front or a coil over setup in the front. The problem with doing lowering springs is they will probably set the front lower than what you can adjust with the rear. You will have to reindex the torsion bars (far more work than adjusting the spring plate) to achieve proper height.

 

"unless you have M030 or Turbo S factory suspension (i think). "
You are correct. Keep in mind though that excessive front lowering can stress the ball joint to failure.

 

www.paragon-products.com look for the ride height kit.

 

Agreed. If you go too low in the front, and retain the stock softish spring rates, you will run into problems when the pin of the ball-joint smacks against the outside of the socket (on aluminum a-arm cars 85.5 and later). This is not so much of an issue on cars that have very agressive spring rates, however it is still a good idea to make some sort of provision if the car is severely lowered (like an aftermarket a-arm such as Charley Arms or running a longer-pinned balljoint like Rennbay's GCK kit.)

 

Thanks a lot guys. Hmm...well I desperately need new struts. I could do koni sports all around, with a coil-over kit in the front. But say I get 275lb springs in the front, even if I can get the ride height to be level, isn't the car going to oversteer a lot because of the softer "spring" rate in the back? Paragon has those rear coil-over kits, but the cheaper one doesn't have adjustable ride height if I'm not mistaken, and if I put coil-overs in the rear I'd rather get matching springs and do away with my torsion bars all together instead of having to reindex them. Is this possible, or am I better off trying to get stiffer torsion bars to match the front spring rate?

 

Oh, and can you adjust rear camber and toe a useful amount with those plates, too?

 

I got a complete package from Ground Control with 250 lb springs. Lowered the rear with the eccentrics ( they are extremely hard to break loose, I cut them off and replaced them ) car now sits 1" inch lower all around. Also put in Rennbay ball joint kit and Weltmeister Stage II sway bars on front and rear, along with the Rennbay big brake kit. I love how it now handles !

 

275lbs on the front with no increase in rear rate will cause understeer.

If you are going to add coil-overs to the rear, you will need to re-index the T-bars to get it right, there is no way around it really. That being said, the easier route would then be to just get larger t-bars and be done with it.

 

+1 - The stock springs rates are already configured to give the car an understeering attitude, so firming up the front and leaving the rear stock will only compound this.

+1.

I have the Koni coil-over kit up front with 400lb springs and a 31mm hollow torsion bar out back, and no helper springs in the rear. I can adjust the understeer/oversteer attitude via the rear swaybar, which in my case is the 22mm Weltmeister unit.

-Z-man.

 

Oh boy, I need to re-read the Clark's suspension article. Never tuned a vehicle before, but the Clark's article is great if I would pay more attention to it. Okay, so for 275lbs in the front and thicker torsions in the rear, I could get a stable ride, but I still would only be able to drop the car less than 1" without new parts for the rear like coil-overs, right? I guess that is still a decent amount of lowering, although it would be too much work to do just for track events and then raise it back to stock the rest of the time. How do I know what thickness torsion bars to get? Thanks again.

 

You can put the rear as low as you want when you replace the rear T-bars and re-index them. My car is a little over 2 inches lower than stock.

 

I like where this is going. Okay, well I guess I had better start practicing with those torsion bars. I think it is amazing that Porsche makes a car that comes from the factory with that kind of adjustability. Z-man, thanks for the setup advice. 400lb is a bit stiff since I will be driving on the street a lot, but the coil-over in the front and adjustable sway in the rear setup sounds pretty cost-effective. This has been a lot of help and should save me some time and money. I'll be having some fun over the next few weekends.

 

I have the same spring rates as Z-man and honestly it is not really all that harsh. I went from 250lbs to 400lbs and there wasn't much of a noticable change in ride quality on the street. I noticed more of a change when I went from stock rate to the 250lbs actually.

 

For the rear hollow torsion bars, do you mean 31mm actual diameter or eff. diameter? Paragon only has one size of hollows, the 30mm eff. diamter ones. And are the hollow ones really worth the extra $100 or so compared to the solid ones?