sawood12

I installed this kit when I had my KWv3 installed which lowered the car significantly. I was under the car last week and noted just how thin and long the ball joint spindle looks and it has dented my confidence that the kit is strong enough for the job. I went for the stock kit with the 17mm pin rather than the race kit with the 19mm pin. What are peoples experiences with this kit? Has it proved itself to be robust enought for the street and track days?

Thanks, Scott.

caster951

I have run them for 2 yrs on the street with 2 DE's and no problems to date.

Scootin159

1 year, 2 DE's & a mess load of Auto-X (10-15 events), all on R-Compounds. No problems.

2bridges

Increased loads due to leverage are reality making the extended length 17mm too risky for me. . I opted for the 19mm. Still not an ideal solution, but the best option available.

Techno Duck

I opted for the 17mm pins. About two full seasons of auto-x on them (probably 20 events) and they have held up just fine aswell as over 15k street miles on some less than stellar roads. Thats with about 3 events on r-compounds also. Arguably auto-x might be a little more extreme in terms of loads put on the pins than even DE, plus the pavement is much rougher.

Just make sure you get the solid upper bushing!!

One of the things i dont like about the 19mm pins is removing material from the spindle pinch. I feel like that 3mm is a fair amount of material to remove from that section. This is based on no true evidence or tangible data though. It just 'looks' sort of iffy. Plenty of people have been running 19mm pins though and never heard of failure here.

How do you like the KW Variant 3 suspension? What spring rates did you end up going with and did you end up deleting or torsion bars? I am planning on this suspension for my 951.

sawood12

I too didn't like removing material from the spindles - yet another opportunity for something to go wrong. I think for my uses it sounds the 17mm should be OK.

KW is superb. I went with their standard spring rates which is about 250 lb ish up front and about 330 lb ish at the rear. I also uprated my TB's to 25mm dia M030 ones. The set up is an ideal compromise between road and track setup in my view. If it was stiffer it'd be undriveable on road.

I stuck with stock sway bars to see how I got on. I don't like the idea of big sway bars - i'd rather keep them as small as I can get away with.

I also went with the Racers Edge adjustable top plates and the whole setup is razor sharp and i'm still on stock bushes apart from 968 castor bushes.

In a word - superb.

2bridges

Hi sawood12.

In all the reasearch, reading, talking with racers, I have never, ever heard of a spindle failure from being machined for 19mm. Failure point is always the pin or the control arm. The long standing charlie arms were only sold with 19mm as they felt 17mm was not adequate for track use. These have been used by racers for years and years. A machinist worth a crap can machine within .001 of an inch of actual pin size. This is substancially tigheter than the factory tollerance and provides better clamping force area than factory. just sayin

sawood12

You're right of course and having seen the 17mm spindle I now wish i'd gone with the 19mm kit as i'm from the engineering school of "If it looks right it is probably over-engineered" and I like over-engineering. However despite my initial fear it sounds like the 17mm dia spindle should be perfectly fine for me and what I use the car for. I'd be more worried if these kits had been known to be a weak spot but it sounds like they are probably not.

Charlie arms - now that is suspension ****!

Gator_86_951

You will be totally fine. That pin won't see near enough sheer for it to be a problem.