Richard,

If you don't have to R&R the spring plate bushings, that'll save you lots of time. Ripping the rubber off those plates is a little time consuming.

Hopefully you won't run into a sticky torsion bar either. Usually the bar get slightly rusted in the spring plate housing at the outer end. Put the plate assy. in a vise and you can pop the cap off the end of the housing. Beat the bar out with a dowel rod of some type. Put a little penetrating lube on there to coax it out too.

Like the others said, make sure to mark where your plate hangs before you remove it. You can then reinstall it in the same place and not have to hassle with reindexing the torsion bar and whatnot. But, you may be considering lowering your car to the "Euro" height of 25 in. in the back. Still, mark the plate angle on the wheel well so you have a point of reference from which to work.

You'll also want to consider "centering" the new spring plates. They are usually at one extreme (mine were set such that you could only raise the ride height) and won't allow an equal amount of adjustability either up or down.

I can't comment on the inner bushings of the trailing arm. I did not have my motor out when I did my suspension work (only so much room in my garage!!!), so I couldn't remove the trailing arms.

I'd recommend marking the position of the camber and toe eccentric bolts on the trailing arm too. Use some red paint and mark a swab of paint across the bolts and the trailing arm. That'll help you get things aligned at least relatively close to the original settings. You need a 12mm hex key for these bolts by the way.......

I hope you have new spring plate bushing covers too. Mine were pretty bad when I removed them at 65K miles:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...ybushcover.jpg

The plates with the new bushings on them are going to be kinda stubborn to install. Spray the bushings with silicone spray and smack the plate in there with rubber mallet.

If you've got a helper, you should be able to do this in a day, each of you doing a side

Guys:
It amazes me that for a car platform that's been around for 30+ years, we're still saying that the rear suspension ride height is a hit or miss proposition with a number of iterations required.
This bugged me so much, that I worked up a math formula to do it right the first time....even with upgraded torsion bar sizes. You need overall vehicle weight and an accurate assumption of weight distribution. The formula was embraced by Thom Fitzpatrick who worked up a simpler software package for this. See his web page for our collaborative effort. It works.
---Wil Ferch

On my SC, I was able to pull the trailing arm bolts w/ no problems w/ the engine installed. Early cars may be different but for anyone thinking about doing this to their later car, no worries.

Also, I removed the training arms w/ the emergency brakes, bearings, and etc. still installed. I didn’t want to replace the bearings at this time and it’s not something that I would need to take everything apart to do, so I didn’t mess w/ them.

I’m having a hard time pulling the torsion bars. I got the left side after fighting it w/ a friends help but the right one is being a b!tch. I’ll try spraying some PB Blaster in there to loosen things up.

Anyone getting ready to do this should make sure to order new CV joint gaskets, I forgot.

Work is still in progress. I decided that since it will probably be a long time before I do this again I would take the time to clean everything up and paint a few things. I’ll post pictures when it’s all back together. I forgot to take before pictures.

I’m upgrading to 22/28 torsion bars and 22/21 Carrera sway bars during this and that’s the reason I’m doing it in the first place. I will need to index the torsion bars and am afraid that it may be hit and miss. Wil, I would love to check out your numbers for indexing. Could you post a link for me?

There is a pretty good amount of information available about the re-indexing. For me I probably set and re-set the assembly 4-5 times. The toughest part is the angle you measure is different when you have just assembled it versus when you set the car down and then lifted it again and pulled the wheel. I think the bushing sticks. So beware of this. The Pelican tech article gives good info on how much the splines allow you you adjust the ride height. I cannot recall what I set my angle at. Make sure your sway bars are not connected when you do the indexing. It's a trial and error thing. Also, another hard part is the window between the spring plate being in the car versus totally off the t-bar (lost indexing) is very narrow. If you can watch that then I would assemble it as a best guess. Lower the car, take a ride height number, do the math to see how lower you want it, then calculate the spline combination to get you that much lower, raise the car, pull the spring plate (not so hard to lose the index) and then reset the t-bars accordingly to your calculations. That should work.

My advice to anyone who is taking apart a 911 rear suspension is to get the later style factory adjustable spring plates. With a little common sence you should be able to get the ride height right with two trys if you are changing tosion bars, one try if you are only changing bushings.

On the monoballs, ours are made of stainless steel. There is no need to anodize. This allows for easier install and removal because of different expansion properties of steel and aluminum and helps prevent aluminum on aluminum galling. We use a readily available teflon lined bearing. The price differential is only a couple of dollars each. If the monoballs themselves wear out they are readily available for about $30 a pair. Part #is COM10T from most supliers.