H&R coilover question...weird thing

just installed a brand new set for a '99 996. weird thing is...visually, the car is lowered evenly on all corners. however, the 2 rear coilovers are not lowered by the same amount if measured with a ruler of some sort. is this normal? ride seems no different.

hey kel! you may want to get corner balance as well.

This may be a dumb question but are you looking at the car on a reliably flat surface (such as an alignment rack)? I installed my coilovers a few weeks ago and did not have that same experience. What I did find out though (for anyone else thinking about installing your own) is that in the rear, the sway bar mounts (the nice billet and anodized pieces) have to be set properly (in terms of height) otherwise your rear sway bar WILL hit your control arms. I found this out the hard way and the worst part is that you have to disconnect the rear lower shock assembly mount to spin the sway bar mount to the proper height. Do you love your suspension as much as I love mine?

Get the GT3 super cup bars and you can adjust them (5) options front , (4) options rear and not have that problem....You might even get a better feel from your new springs and coils :-) If you just had springs and or coils put on ...you should corner balance and align your car!!!! Kind of like going out to play soccer with new shoes and not using laces. A waste of time...you can get a better alignment if you like to give you better performance...but it will cost you a little tire wear (nothing is free in life )

Hey Alon, I just had the HRs installed this past week along with m030 bars and I have notice an occasional clunking in the rear. Is this indictative of the problem your describing? It also seems as if the front jounce is a bit high. I was pretty conservative in my lowering of the car...well above GT3 specs. I'm thinking of going back and redoing the height and alignment as I'm not particuarly happy with the setup at the moment. After auto-Xing the car this weekend, it seems that rear had become extremely finicky...a simple chirp of the tires and any more and it lets loose pretty violently. Also I was relatively disappointed in the the cornering attitude, car didn't seem to be much flatter than with my stock suspension, on the road its definately better, but at the track in hard cornering no. Certainly didn't seem to improve my times much if at all.

Given the importance of this adjustment, I thought I'd post the text of the correspondence between me and Kelly for anyone else who might have this problem. After reflection, I realized that it could be fairly dangerous! Interestingly, my problem was with the right rear also. Hi Kelly! Yes, I bought my car back to my tech and indeed the sway bar was coming into contact with rear control arm, not good! You can easily check if that is happening by visual inspection. Its easier if you jack the car up, but just look right above where the rear sway bar crosses the lower control arm. I had a definate ding in mine, although no real damage. In fact, the bar had a larger ding in it on top, which you can't see but if you reach in you might feel it. I did an autocross in the car not knowing this was the problem and the car felt a very loose at the limit. This was due to the rear bar having come loose from the impact (it also bent my drop out a bit). Something had to give and the lock nut that holds the mount point loosened, thus allowing the bar to move freely about. Once the car went into oversteer, it was fairly violent. My tech suspects that the bar might have been binding up the rear control arms, thus the exceeding bad behavior. After having it fixed, I now no longer hear much coming from back there. Perhaps an occasionally clunk, which my tech attributes to the lack of rubber in the spring seat. I'd definately take an immediate look at your setup to make sure all is okay. Hope this helps! =Ron= Kelly Fong wrote: hey rj, "kfong22" here from Rennlist. i too have that clunking, mine's coming from the right rear. i was thinking perhaps its set too low? but now sounds like the sway bars need to be adjusted. your thoughts? kelly

RJay. My story parallels yours exactly. BTW, one guy told me the clunk is the drop links needing to be tightened. I'm going to address that at my next annual service in November. Here is his e-mail to me: "it's the drop links. It clunked a little right after I had them installed, which I thought was just part of the deal, but then I went to the track and afterwards they were a lot worse. I took the car in to have them looked at, hoping I hadn't broken something, and they tightened the nuts down and voila, it only squeaks now!"

I also have a clunking on my suspension and my tech showed me that it was the endlinks (from the TRG sway bar kit) being mounted on the wrong hardware. The bolts used were too small in diameter and there was some play. He said that TRG have since switched to improved hardware, so I will try to get those new hardware from them. And after reading your posts, I will also check that there's no contact between the endlinks and the control arms.

When I got mine from TRG they told me to wait due to a redesign of the drop link. I guess they had discovered they were binding under movement. I think it had to do with the amount of swivel the the ends needs to have. And they were having a hard time finding who was making them for Porsche or made one just like theirs. I ended up paying a little (lot actually) more for Porsche Factory drop links, but I have never had them bind on me. From what I understand they do have the correct parts now. (I'm not implying they were doing anything wrong to begin with, I think they just discovered the part they were using did not have the degree of movment required.)