Carrera back on the road. Suspension/brakes. PICS.

[Wavey]

I finally got my Carrera back on the road over the weekend. It's been up on jackstands since freaking MEMORIAL DAY, so it felt great to get back in it. I got the wheels back on and dropped it Saturday, went for a short ride, then washed off 5 months of grime.

Parts of the project were covered on these threads:

FINALLY tearing into it...

Suspension / Brake Reassembly Questions

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/241737-help-please-suspension-reassembly-questions.html#post2129528

The following projects were completed:

Elephant Racing front control arm PolyBronze kits and front self-aligning mounts.
New torsion bars; 21mm Sway-a-way front, 28mm Sanders hollow rear (Thanks Souk!)
New ball joints, retainers, etc.
New Turbo tie rod ends (already had the tie rod kits installed).
Weltmeister rack spacer kit .
Elephant Racing rear spring plate PolyBronze kits.
New Blisteins; Sport rears, HD fronts with strut housings painted to match rears.
All new sway bar bushings and rear end links (already had the HD rear mounts).
New front and rear wheel bearings, seals, etc.
Zimmermann front and rear drilled rotors.
AJ front brake ducts and blockoff plates (rear backing plates deleted).
Calipers remanufactured and polymer coated by Gold Line.
Metal Master front and rear brake pads, new parking brake shoes.
Stainless brake hoses, new hard lines at the calipers.
New master cylinder (stock 21 mm).
Super Blue brake fluid.

The front and rear control arms, spring plates, hubs, crossmember, swaybars and brackets, and all the little stuff were cleaned, glassbeaded, and painted or clear coated as required.

It's going in Wednesday for a final ride height adjustment, then corner balancing and alignment at Reid Vann in St. Louis.

SO, what do I think?

Some of the parts installations were definitely challenging and frustrating, but not beyond the skills of most Pelicans, as long as you're willing to persevere and forget your time table. Most challenging projects were pulling and installing the rear wheel bearings, getting the Elephant stuff shimmed/adjusted to work correctly, and reinstalling the front swaybar. I also have a pair of Elephant sealed rear monoballs that will be installed when the tranny comes out next year. After days of trying every trick in the bag, I finally gave up on getting the bolts out.

BUT, Holy ***** does it feel great , even before the corner weighting and alignment! Surprisingly, it rides better than it did with the worn-out OEM stuff - a little firm but not at all harsh, but even more compliant than OEM. And it stays a lot flatter under cornering and braking. On corner exits it really hooks up and lays the power down, definitely better than before. And the old bump-steer and front torsion bar squeaks are gone. All-in-all, well worth the effort. The car is transformed.

After about 50 shakedown miles the ride height has settled at 24 1/8" front and 24 3/4" rear - the front tow hooks are barely touching under hard cornering while braking, so I'll have Vann reset it to 24 1/2" front, then trim the tow hooks off if I need to.

I'm thinking I may go up another size on the front bars since they're so easy to change (I went from the stock 19mm to 21mm on the front, rears are up from 25mm to 28mm). Any thoughts on if 22mm or 23mm would allow me to stay with the lower ride height?

Or I may give up and go up one tire size on the front - I'm running 205/50s which are .90" smaller diameter than the stock 225s, so I could pick up almost 1/2" ground clearance just from the tires, and visually fill the wheel openings better. But I chose this size because it has the same tread width as the OEM 225s, provides sharper turn-in characteristics, and looks better with the lower-profile rears.

Finally, MANY THANKS to the Pelicans who provided advice and support - Chuck Moreland, Souk, Thrasher, Shaun 84 Targa, KTL, Kurt V, John Walker, and everyone else.

EDIT 11/01! Thanks also to Wil Ferch for his excellent rear torsion bar indexing calculator:
http://www.rennlight.com/cgi-bin/spring.cgi
I got mine exactly wehere I wanted them, first try!

Some pics for your viewing pleasure:

Side view without rockers reinstalled:


Front fender clearance:


Rear fender clearance:


These towhooks were nice and round on the bottom 50 miles ago:


Final assembly pics, before it all gets dirty again:

[Imcoz]

Wavey,
Thanks for posting these pics. Beautiful ride. I'm on the same track with my Black 88. Curious as to how your t-bar combo feels.

Chris

[cbeers]

VERY nice work Wavey.

Did you end up ditching your brake sensors? If so, what exactly did you do about them?

I am rebuilding my brakes now and was thinking about tossing the sensor stuff.......

-Chris

[Nine9six]

Chris,
Just zip tie them outta the way, or unplug them...
Paul

[d5c5b]

wavey- your car looks fantastic......love the work youve done to it. Looks very stealth, clean....would love to see more pics of your car from different angles.....

[Wavey]

Originally posted by cbeers
VERY nice work Wavey.

Did you end up ditching your brake sensors? If so, what exactly did you do about them?

I am rebuilding my brakes now and was thinking about tossing the sensor stuff.......

-Chris

Thanks, Chris. There seems to be some difference between years and models regarding how to disconnect the sensors and not have the brake warning light stay on. I did a search and found a thread that said to NOT connect the 2 sensor wires together, so that's what I did. I snipped the harnesses and insulated the wire ends just to keep everything tidy (you can see that in the front suspension pic). Of course now my brake warning light is permanently on I was going to just pull the bulb but it's soldered to a little circuit board behind the lenses. So for now I have taped over the lens, and when I get time I will redo the ends, connecting the 2 wires. I figure that anyone who owns a 911 should have the sense to check their brake pads occasionally.

[Wavey]

Originally posted by d5c5b
wavey- your car looks fantastic......love the work youve done to it. Looks very stealth, clean....would love to see more pics of your car from different angles.....

Thanks! It will look better with the rockers reinstalled. I also have the Ruf front and rear bumpers (waiting to get time to do that project) which will look even better. I also have a f/g early-Carrera style tail, but I think I'll wait and see if I can find a genuine Weissach tail instead. That will be it in the cosmetics department.

Next step: Das Sport bolt-in roll bar.

Future plans: gearbox rebuild to get rid of an annoying differential whine, and I'd really like to move the 1st through 3rd ratios up and closer (love that 3rd to 4th shift right now!). Then more power - not sure what direction yet but a supercharger seems appealing

I plan on keeping this car until they put me in the ground.

I'll post more pics later.

[Wavey]

Originally posted by Imcoz
Wavey,
Thanks for posting these pics. Beautiful ride. I'm on the same track with my Black 88. Curious as to how your t-bar combo feels.

Chris

Thanks Chris! If I had known how nice this would ride, I probably would have gone up another notch on the t-bars. As it is, it rides every bit as nice as OEM - not harsh at all, just really feels planted. I may still go to 22s on the front, so I can keep the nose down without scraping.

[450knotOffice]

Excellent work!! The car and the components look great. Pretty amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it, eh?

Enjoy the fruits of your labor. You earned it.

[Wavey]

Thanks, Scott.

More pics:

[Imcoz]

I actually have hollow sanders 22mm for the front and solid 28's for the rear. I will be also be using Bils sports in the rear w/ HDs in front. I'll stay with the stock sway bars for now, but will upgrade those next year. I just added a test pipe and an older style B&B muffler... man does it sound sweet. I just adjusted my valves and am in the process of changing all the oil lines, motor mounts (Wevo), & SS brake lines.

I'm planning on doing the Ruf bumpers this winter, I'd be curious which ones you're going with. I hear the Shaw parts are usually the 1st choice although BetterBodies has an attractive price on both their front and rears right now.

Chris

[donstevens]

Nice work. I like this era car without tails.

Don

[d5c5b]

thats it....im buying a black carrera.....great pics!

[jpnovak]

I went though the previous post and must have missed this one...

What finish is on your spring plates? I see the zinc/cad on the spring plate collars but the spring plates themselves are distinctly different. Looks like a gold metallic PC to me.

[Wavey]

Originally posted by Imcoz
I actually have hollow sanders 22mm for the front and solid 28's for the rear. I will be also be using Bils sports in the rear w/ HDs in front. I'll stay with the stock sway bars for now, but will upgrade those next year. I just added a test pipe and an older style B&B muffler... man does it sound sweet. I just adjusted my valves and am in the process of changing all the oil lines, motor mounts (Wevo), & SS brake lines.

I'm planning on doing the Ruf bumpers this winter, I'd be curious which ones you're going with. I hear the Shaw parts are usually the 1st choice although BetterBodies has an attractive price on both their front and rears right now.

Chris

Hey Chris,

Sounds like we're going to have very similar cars! I wish I had gone with the 22mm up front. With the new bushings and shocks it feels pretty much like stock, so the extra t-bar would be about right. I've kept the stock sways for now too, might change them in the future. I've also got the sport motor mounts.

I've had the Ruf bumpers for a couple of years - got in on Souk's group buy from BW Motorsports, which is about 1/2 hour from here so I got a great deal and no shipping. I will definitely hand-fit them to the car before painting, and they also need some general reworking in a number of areas - irregular radiuses around the turn signal openings, stuff like that. I don't know if any particular brand is really much better than any other - pretty much a crap shoot, and the fit will vary car-to-car.

[Wavey]

Originally posted by jpnovak
I went though the previous post and must have missed this one...

What finish is on your spring plates? I see the zinc/cad on the spring plate collars but the spring plates themselves are distinctly different. Looks like a gold metallic PC to me.

I bead-blasted them and sprayed with a catalyzed polyurethane primer and catalyzed polyurethane satin gold that we use in the shop (it's a sign industry paint). I will probably regret not powdercoating them or getting them replated. The spring plate covers are new.

When I get time to clean up the shop I'll post pics of some of the old parts. I was pretty shocked at how bad the front torsion bars were grooved, how rusted the spring plate covers were, and how totally shot the boots were on the cheapo turbo tie rod ends. This is a one-owner, well cared for, 76K mile car.

[Imcoz]

Wavey,
Just curious, did the sport mounts add any noticable crispness to the G50s shifting? Mine feels a little sloppy, I guess I'm hoping there's an improvement.

[greglepore]

Nice work. Its funny that you mention the swaybar, I did a similar rebuild last year and reinstalling the front swaybar (late Carrera factory) was the nastiest part of the deal.

I'm running 21's and 29's (solid) and totally happy w/ it. Going to 22's is an order of magnitude stiffer in the front, and I'm not sure I'd want it stiffer there for a street car. I'm at about your ride height with a 930s valence, and it scrapes in lots of places, so as much as I like the look and the planted feel, I'm thinking about going up a half. Something to think about if you're going to a RUF setup, particularly with a lip or a splitter. The dragging tow hooks would worry me, after all, if they catch something it can be a very expensive fix to the pan.

[ricwon]

Car is looking great! Now it just needs that stainless steel Dansk pre-muffler spiffed up to complete the look ric

[Wavey]

Originally posted by Imcoz
Wavey,
Just curious, did the sport mounts add any noticable crispness to the G50s shifting? Mine feels a little sloppy, I guess I'm hoping there's an improvement.

Not really. Just made the back end feel a little tighter, like there is as little less slop between the throttle and the ground. My G50 shifter feels slightly loose too, so new shift bushings and pedal bushings are also on the list.