M030 ROW Install insights (Long)

Just thought I would share my experience of fitting M030 suspension to my 40th 996 with 45k miles on it. It�s a long post and for many will be boring. But it is the first time I have done suspension replacements and thought I would share in case you were thinking of doing the same. It�s easy, do it yourself, take your time, enjoy lavishing TLC on your 996 and save the labor $ My car is mainly a daily driver here in the Midwest and has to put up with truly awful roads here, damaged by out frigid winters and patched up on a yearly basis, very rarely will you find a strip of perfect tarmac that�s seen more than 1 winter. My car is standard, other than Victor Innsbruck wheels. My car drives great, but over the last 2 years I felt that maybe the suspension could do with a refresh and liked the idea of lowering it a little over the US spec M030 fitted as standard. But I didn�t want a slammed car that rides even worse than standard. I also enjoy 2-3 DE�s a year so wanted something a little more sporty. I looked at coil overs vs the M030 ROW kit, and went for the M030 from Sunset for 2 reasons, I liked the fact that the M030 is Porsche developed and at $1,400 it was a great price�. more of that later So last weekend the temperature warmed enough to make working in the garage bearable, so I started the strip down, as background I�d say I have pretty good car experience, have basic tools and a lift, but I�ve never swapped out suspension so this was a first for me. The strip down of the front was pretty quick, I thought I might have a rough front wheel bearing so before jacking the car up I loosened all the hub nuts with a breaker bar and extension. I felt that if I did had a bad bearing I�d replace them all whilst I had the suspension stripped. Jacked the car up and had it sitting on stands, started with the fronts and removed the wheels and calipers. With it being a C2 you can easily remove the calipers and spin the discs to hear the wheel bearings, I was surprised that with only 45k miles, my RHS bearing was a little noisy but could be deemed serviceable, but the LHS was starting to rumble, so at that stage I decided to replace all 4 to be on the safe side, with the hubs off my local Indy quoted $100 labor to press in the new bearings, which I thought was pretty good, with parts it should be around $500. Back to the suspension, there are plenty of DIY�s around and following them is simple, the only thing I couldn�t do was loosen the shock top nut whilst in the car, even with an impact driver. The only way to get it off was with a ring wrench and hex key with the shock in a vice off the car. My top nut was corroded which didn�t help, as a tip I would suggest a few sprays of liquid wrench a week or so before you start the job to help you out. The rest of the front was simple, an Auto Zone rented tie rod puller was good enough to get the front diagonal ball joint off, but you need the scissor pulley type for the control arm to hub ball joint. I ended up removing my hub and control arm together and will get the Indy to split them when they do the wheel bearings. The only other glitch I had was one of the front diagonal arm bolts to the chassis had seized in the arm bush, so they will need replacing. Auto Zone sprint compressors worked fine to disassemble the shocks, with free rental it�s not worth buying your own. Like I mentioned at the beginning, I expected that as my car only had 45k I would do the shock replacement and that would be it, job done! Well, on checking the control arms I could see that there was some small cracks in the rubber bushings, same cracks were apparent in the shock top mounts. The front top shock bearings were in excellent condition and just need re-greasing. The removal of the rears is a similar story, only difference is on the fronts you needed to take note of the strut mount positions in the fender for the basic alignment, on the rears it is the control and toe arm bolts that you need to mark the position. The only other note is that for those with Bose, to remove the shelf you pop off the Bose speaker covers and there is a Torx bolt to remove, once those are out the Bose shelf pulls off and you can pull back the carpet. To be honest messing around in the confines of the back of the car was the worst bit for me. You also need a long 15mm socket to remove the rear strut mounting nuts, I didn�t have one, but a 5/8 spark plug socket did the trick. So in the end I decided to replace all the suspension bushings, on checking a few websites I plugged for Pelican with a mix of genuine Porsche and OEM supplied parts, I went for complete replacement arms rather than trying to replace individual bushings. I called Pelican and they stated that the EOM parts are the exact same parts as Porsche, but come direct from the suppliers, cutting out Porsche�s margins, hence the cheaper price. So overall my $1,400 suspension upgrade is now closer to $4,000!!!, with $2,000 worth of suspension arms and mounts and $500 for new wheel bearings all round. In hindsight it�s a waste of time fitting minty new shocks and springs to a car with 10 year old rubber suspension bushes, so I hope when assembled and aligned my car will drive as good as the day it left the factory, after $4k I hope I notice a difference other than my wallets lighter. Again, sorry for the long winded post, but hopefully it will be of use to someone thinking of doing this job. First, it is easier than you think! Second, to do it right it may be more expensive than you think. Here is a pic of the car all stripped, waiting for the parts now, maybe a few weeks before its finished with Spring Break vacation coming up, but if you�re interested I�ll post some comments on the assembly. [IMG] [/IMG]

triple cheater.

Thanks for the post, I just ordered a ROW kit for my 2002 Targa with 83k miles on it. Debating whether I should do it myself or have my Indy do it, they quoted me $700 for installation and alignment. Did you also install the sway bars and if so, we're they difficult?

Haven't started installing yet, but the sways are the easiest parts to install. It really is simple to do, with a decent tool kit you could easily do it in a weekend, probably wrap it up in a day if needed

I'm looking at the same "mod". An indy I spoke with recommended replacing the drop links / ball joints as well. Any thoughts on this?

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I changed the ball joints along with the install of row kit. Outer joints are less than $60 per side so I figured why not. $700 for install and alignment is not bad at all. Alignment is usually $100-130 alone. I would take that deal. Row m030 is what these cars need from the start. I am thinking about adding some beefier sways and finish out the suspension for my car.

Im replacing all my ball joints, and bushings with buying replacement control arms

Can someone post some before/after pictures. I'm considering doing the RoW M030 mod to my 2002 996 as well. Thank you.

Update, well the parts have started to arrive, interesting that looking at the top mounts from Pelican are the exact same part as the Porsche. You can see that they linish off the porsche part number, everything else has has the same markings, great but at $31 vs $270!! [IMG] [/IMG] Old Part No. [IMG] [/IMG] Pelican part with the Porsche part No. still there [IMG] [/IMG] Front refit started, Nice new control arms and hubs with new Wheel bearings [IMG] [/IMG]

Gunna install my ROW M030 kit in a few weeks when it arrives, would the old components be worth anything if I tried to sell? I have a 2002 Targa with 83k miles on it. I'm in Los Angeles if anyone would be interested in them. Chris