The 964 was originally sitting on a set of height adjustable Bilstein’s a fairly common swap with the factory shock absorber and a set of cut Eibach sport springs. It provided a good ride and handled great on a chopped spring. You may be thinking ‘a chopped spring handle well?’ well they were not progressively wound spring where the spring rate changes within the spring. They were chopped to bring the car lower to a more visually pleasing height but that wasn’t enough for us.
We wanted to bring the car really low, to push the limits, see how well it could handle at a ride height that looks like the wheels wouldn’t turn. We installed a set of the lowest riding coilovers on our 91 Targa the H&R deep. With them on there lowest setting we were experiencing a bouncy ride. Spinning down the spring perches on the H&R shock body we were left with minimal shock travel and a no longer fun to drive car.
We began planning how we could achieve this,
We removed the top hats from the 964’s suspension, traced and measured out what we needed to have this aluminum plate machined.
We created a top hat replacement with camber adjustment to use a pillow ball mount. The pillow ball mount will replace the factory bearing and rubber used for dampening. This in turn will translate more road vibration to the chassis, but will also give you better feel of your steering.
From steel we had the mounts water jet out and welded them to a strut adjuster to make these new coilover’s have an adjustable mounting bracket.
Thread struts and parts were purchased from Stance Suspension USA. The rear bottom mounts had larger bushing inner diameter for the mounting bolt. We had a brass sleeve machined to work as a washer and close in the gap for the smaller bolt.
Aluminum parts were all stripped and polished to a mirror finish and set off to get anodized.
Some of the parts were left polished as the anodizer said there was some sort of plating on the parts already, and wasn’t picking up any color from the tank.
8kg/mm rear and a 6kg/mm front spring rates, we chose these rates after looking at the spring rates from the Carrera lightweight(c4 race car), Carrera RS, Carrera Cup. We wanted a mix from the street RS to the other 964 race cars.
Something you wont see on most coilover’s is on top of this spring. Its a roller bearing mount, to mimic the roller bearing thats in the top mount of factory top mount. It gives you a really smooth turn in tight turns, you wont hear the spring friction or binding noises that you would on normal coilover’s.
Final assembly, the studs are pressed in to the camber plate.
During this down time of building a set of coilovers, we decided to tackle the brakes and alternator fan.
We knocked out all the pistons with air, found one with some sidewall damage and a couple of seized pistons. It was about time they were rebuilt.
Brakes parts and alternator parts polished up from the tumbler.
The fan went out for powered coating, we wanted to have have a stock look. The fan shroud was coated with an enamel, both parts being magnesium show signs of corrosion the shroud a lot more than the fan as water can pool in it.
Pully hardware looking great after being polishing.
Brakes back from powered coating.
Brake hardware freshened up from tumbling.
Stay tuned for a finished look at the 964