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Another lowered car rear camber issue post

To my mind if you are going to fit coilovers then you really need to fit a quality set as the cheaper end of the market won't necessarily offer you a performance increase over standard and may make the handling worse or degrade quicker in the British weather.

Because they are so adjustable you need to get them professionally set up which is going to cost considerably more than a £100 alignment and a company like CG will highlight any further wear in your suspension components so it's likely you may need to buy some addition arms/bushes as there is no point doing half a job. Add in corner balancing etc/extra labour and you could easily spend £5k just because you wanted a slightly lower ride height.
You will have a lovely handling car which is probably never going to be raced around a track but very empty pockets when you could have achieved what most want for about £550 (springs/adjustable arms/spacers & geo) if your dampers are still good and you can change springs yourself.
 
Yes, all springs can sag over time, I had imagined that the springs were m030 as they were black and looked lower in the rear hence maybe sagged but when the brand new -30mm springs fitted had exactly the same drop I was a bit gutted. Should have jacked up and examined them, would have seen h&r before blindly buying parts

Lowered several cars with Eibach springs and always been a success, never too low, usually higher than other previous lowering springs fitted so thought it would be a safe bet. They work alright as is but I think a 10-15mm spring perch spacer platform on the rears would probably have been enough on the 996 to eliminate the issues we have encountered with camber when lowering with -30mm springs

plus It's really too low at the rear from a practical point of view, scraping on stuff in dips

Otherwise get an m030 kit or go ohlins for full adjustability

My coffin arms were not in good shape but they appeared to be the originals so had done 19 years service! :wink: :dont know: :cop:
 
911munKy said:
To my mind if you are going to fit coilovers then you really need to fit a quality set as the cheaper end of the market won't necessarily offer you a performance increase over standard and may make the handling worse or degrade quicker in the British weather.

Because they are so adjustable you need to get them professionally set up which is going to cost considerably more than a £100 alignment and a company like CG will highlight any further wear in your suspension components so it's likely you may need to buy some addition arms/bushes as there is no point doing half a job. Add in corner balancing etc/extra labour and you could easily spend £5k just because you wanted a slightly lower ride height.
You will have a lovely handling car which is probably never going to be raced around a track but very empty pockets when you could have achieved what most want for about £550 (springs/adjustable arms/spacers & geo) if your dampers are still good and you can change springs yourself.

Totally agree but I always change out dampers if Im changing out to lower springs unless I know the current dampers are almost new. I also agree on the budget coilovers remark, I think it depends on a lot of other things as well. Im planning on doing all coffins arms, top mounts and tuning forks when I do the suspension so it looks like adjustable arms is good as well. All this in top of suspension is as you say a big factor but then I do plan on using the car more next year when I sell one of my other cars.

asterix_the_gaul I didn't get a PM, did your old springs sit tail down?
 
I had my Carrera 2 at Center Gravity in January this year for their health check. I always felt my car was nervous but since I'd never owned a 911 before, I couldn't tell whether it was normal behaviour.

The car was on standard dampers and H&R springs.

It measured 113 mm at the front and 124 mm at the rear.

-31' and -40' camber at the front
-1 deg 51' and -1 deg 59' camber at the rear
+0.02 left toe and +0.01 right toe at the rear.

No wonder it felt nervous! The toe at the rear becomes negative as soon as you accelerate. Additionally the adjustment was at max i.e. more positive toe could not be applied.

I'm currently having new Koni Special Active dampers and Eibach springs fitted and I was hoping the H&Rs had sagged and the rear would be lifted slightly from 124 mm such that some more toe could be applied. After reading this thread it seems likely it's going to get worse because the Eibachs are lower than H&Rs!

Will soon see once the parts are fitted and the car is on the alignment rig.
 
Hi Toml, it does look like the rear toe setting was the main source of your handing woes as it should be about +0.10', I reckon last time it was set the alignment operator couldn't get it into spec due to the lowered springs giving excessive rear camber so, not knowing what he was doing, traded it with the toe setting to get the camber near enough. Yikes!

My knowledge in the dark art of suspension is limited but from Porsche manual data the standard, M030 & X74 settings should all have a positive rake of 15mm (GT3 is adjustable), yours is 11mm so could do with a little more but that may also be affected by tyre size and wear so I'm not sure how much difference an extra 4mm of rake would be noticeable to the average road driver. My car currently has 295/35R18 tyres and if I change to 285/35 then the rear will sit 3mm lower anyway according to the maths.

Having non height adjustable suspension I'm just going to add my 10mm perch spacers and adjustable toe arms and hope it aligns to X74 spec, that will be the time to stop delving any further as I'll just tie myself (and wallet) in knots!

Please post back any feedback once you've had your suspension done, thanks.
 
If anyone is interested in knowing more about suspension then this is a great link, 4 part series on the basics and how handling is influenced by different factors.

https://youtu.be/VbReLNi2JP4

I've subscribed to his YouTube channel, the guy is a young genius.
He built his own car in India to experiment with suspension setup and drives it illegally on the road, he then moved to Canada and got into modifying his AMG E55 Merc to race track it, he does all the engineering/rebuilds/fabricating and is now building a new race car chassis to swap all the E55 components to.
He's an excellent mechanic, engineer, teacher and lunatic. Check out his crash into a tuk tuk in India in his self made car and the police with machine guns!
 
So when my car was at CG back in January they suggested perches to raise the rear.

I think I will try and get hold of spring perches and have them fitted as a matter of course, saving paying for labour twice!! Did anyone already buy perches? Have a link?
 
I couldn't find anywhere to buy them for our car so I got some made up. I originally wanted them in Polyurethane but it was going to be too expensive to make in a low quantity so I got a machine shop to turn some up in aluminium.
£25 for 2 + P&P. I measured them (from memory) as 51mm ID, 75mm OD and 10mm thick for my M030 shock absorbers.
Don't trust these dimensions measure your own!

There could be an opportunity for our very own Alex Yates engineering to add another product to his 996 range as several folk seem to be having this issue.
 
Just had an email reply from CG saying it's possible to knock the old perches off the original dampers and place them on top of the perches on the Koni dampers to effectively double them up. Wish I had my car and parts with me so I could have a look see!
 
Toml said:
Just had an email reply from CG saying it's possible to knock the old perches off the original dampers and place them on top of the perches on the Koni dampers to effectively double them up. Wish I had my car and parts with me so I could have a look see!

Good point, I still have my old shockers so could use these if I ever need/want to go higher.
 
Just had a thought, if the -30mm aftermarket springs take the car too low for x74 geo and the m030 don't drop the car enough for some people and you don't want to do coil overs then isn't the answer to get X74 springs? Just checked the PET, they are on there.. Surely they would give a middle ground drop and allow x74 settings?
 
Well I finally had some time to fit the 10mm spring spacers and adjustable toe arms this afternoon, alignment at another place tomorrow morning with more experienced technicians so hopefully no problems getting to X74 spec.
Car squats less in the rear now with the spacers and has less of a slammed stance.
 
Spacer below spring, it's a serendipitous coincidence that the springs and toe arm match the bodywork!
 

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