Suspension adjustments
We made a big step towards our travelplans this week, by adjusting the wheels and suspension.
We swapped the aluminium fuchs wheels (with lowprofile tires) with much sturdier original porsche steel wheels. We have put heavy duty reinforced snowtires on these
rims, which will give us the necessary load capacity and strength. This gave us 2cms gain in rideheight right away.
Next on the list was a rideheight change, and a corner balance.
Front first: i turned the torsion bar adjustment bolts to the max, and went for a testdrive. Afterwards, i checked the left-right balance with the tripod method.
There was a difference of 1cm in rideheight, and i adjusted it accordingly.
At the rear there's more work involved to raise the car: you have to reindex the torion bars. This means putting more 'preload' on the bars by turning them in one
direction. This was my modus operandi:
- raise the car on the bridge
- loose the wheels
- take off the torsion bar protection caps
- raise the arm slightly so you can remove the shock from the arm.
- the arm now drops completely, with almost no tension on it (full droop). Take out the two excentric adjustment bolts and the two bolts that hold the springplate
to the arm.
- take off the springplate, and pray to god that the torsion bar stays in the car. I was 50% lucky. On one side, the torsion bar stuck to the springplate, and as
there is no way of putting force on it to pull it out, i opted to drill a hole in the center of the springplate 'bushing', and knock the torsion bar out of it. This
took a whole lot of force, because the bar was almost rusted solid in the bushing.
- I cleaned up the torsion bars with a wire brush and greased them up with lithium grease, and made sure they slid nice and smoothly in their bushings. The splines
were in good condition, and i checked if there were any scratches on the cars. I lubed the bars up with plenty of lithium grease.
- Then it was time to choose the position of the bars. I had put the car perfectly horizontal on the bridge, so i could simply measure the height of the springplate
to the ground. I did this before too. I chose to let the bottom point of the springplates drop around 3,5cms, so i would get around 5cms ride height increase. I did
it this way because i don't have a tool to measure the angle of the springplates. Anyway, i think my method is at least as accurate.
- i mounted everything back up, went for another testdrive, and came back with this conclusion: One side was still 1,5cms higher than the other side, so maybe
there's some difference in the strength of the torsion bars, or the car is not perfectly symmetrical.
- I reindexed one side again, did another testrun, and this time, both sides were within 2mm of eachother. I was more than happy!
Because we added so much ride height (6cms in total!), the wheels were completely out of alignment: the camber was waaaay positive on all wheels, and should be
around neutral or slightly negative to be good.
I decided to hand it over to the professionals, and went to a pro tire shop. Together with the mechanic, i aligned the complete car in about 2 hours. We maxed out
on the rear camber settings, and got an almost neutral figure luckily enough. (so, if i had put the car any higher still, we wouldn't have been able to set the
camber anymore, lucky!) It's a couple of minutes off, but im' not worried about that. We got the toe within spec. This car is meant to be driven very easily on the
street, so no need for big negative camber for us!
On the front, we easily got the camber set (0°) with the help of our cambermeister, and adjusted the toe afterwards. Caster was above max, but once again, not
worreid about that.
The car now looks and feels completely different: it's got a more classic look now, with the steel wheels, and the ride is much much improved!! It feels very light,
and steers very fast! At the same time we lost the nervosity feeling on the highway, and griplevels are drastically improved (we ran very old rubber on the fuchs
rims ). The heavy duty tires do not disturb the ride; the car feels comfy but still doesn't wallow when cornering. I'm very happy!
we're ready for our sponsortrip to England!!
!
