Suspension upgrade to ROW030 - the journey begins (parts received)

I'll try to post in the thread my journey through the upgrade into suspensions RoW-M030. First step: I ordered a kit from Suncoast ($1100) and it just arrived today. I am happy to see it is in one piece, but a little bummed because the packaging is borderline for such heavy parts. So there are a lots of pain chips and dings on the parts. Not destroyed but at some point they almost look like used parts.. should I spend time painting the chips to avoid rust ? or those parts are not to prone to rust ? Enjoy the pics. I tried to have them setup so you can see the paint color on them.

Very nice. They look like the right parts! Keep us posted on the progress

Good luck with the install Phil. Are you doing the work yourself or are you having it installed by a pro? I would not be too concerned about rust but I am sorry to see the condition of the parts coming from Suncoast. I plan to do the same conversion on my car this spring/summer and I intended to order from Suncoast as well. After seing your shipment I may go with another supplier. Let us know what you think of the new suspension once you get a chance to drive it a bit.

Phil: Good luck with the install and I am very interested to know your thoughts once she is back on the road....I would love to do the same to mine.... R\ Scott

those threads are pretty buggard up.. man, you have some bad luck when it comes to packaging. Nice choice though! Im jealous! Edit, they do almost look used.. those marks on the springs look like marks from a spring compressor....

I just did the bars,like to here what you think.

Three quick questions: 1. Whatta ya got there, looks like four shocks, four springs and front and rear sway. 2. After you get it in you have to get the $1000 four wheel allignment right? 3. Why the ROW system vs. PSS10 or other? Guessing it's a good compromise for street and track vs. something like PSS10 that if you don't go through the trouble of adjusting is really a better track set up? Also a lot cheaper than PSS10? Yes I am aware I may be answering my own questions--just giving you a head start.

I would call Suncoast and the shipper about the shipping damage. The threads and the bottom of the rear shocks don't look good to me. A 4 wheel alignment cost me $200 after I did my PSS10 install. And that was a little above the market rate.

My X74 parts were pristine. It is worth a call to Suncoast. They know how big the RL community is. I bought rotors last year from them. They sent 2 rotors for a Boxster by mistake but to make a remedy I had to buy 2 more rotors (again) and they would credit my card when they get the wrong ones back. Make sense? Not to me. I used my money to fix their issue. Also when I was searching for the X74 they would not match the price I was getting elsewhere. So I bought from across the pond cheaper than what they would do. I would give them a call send them pics of what they shipped you.

I got a guy here in the bay who does alignments for $75. He has been doing this for a while and highly recommended even by the Porsche Dealer.

If the buggered threads were mine it wouldn't be the first time I had gone after threads like that with my set of small jewelers style files or pipe and bolt threader. You can find some in a hardware store if you don't care to go through shipping stuff back and forth. I wouldn't try forcing a nut on there. If you try a threader remember to back up to loosen the stuff its cut then go for more progress cutting away the bad stuff.

Phil - Good luck with the install - hope you get satisfaction from Suncoast on the parts that you're concerned about. I appreciate your pics showing the color coding - that validates I've got the right setup as well. No one could confirm the color codes on the springs for me in the past.

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Ha, ha, a guy here does 4 wheel for $59. He's done a Jag and did my 996. He does all the guys that track, SCCA members, etc (that are in the know) not because of price, because he understands suspensions and alignment and know how to tweek a car to make it do what you want. He is second generation, his father used to align all the racers cars, 40 years ago. You can pay $250, have it done on a Hunter machine and get an extremely poor job. Price has nothing to do with quality. Sadly I found this out the same is true using hign end body shops. Sorry to hear your parts were banging around during shipping, I see this too often. I'd make a call! GL!

P-dealer quoted me $300 for alignment. $80 for wheels balanced. Said it would take "all" of three hours for alignment. I had the car aligned before at Monroe Muffler. Took one hour, $70. So what's the P dealer doing with the alignment those two other hours?

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Hey guys, I did not pay attention to this initially until X51 pointed out, but the color codes you got are for a US Sport Version M030. The codes on mine when I got them were white green white. I noticed from the pics you took you got some brown and blue. That belongs to the US Sport (Ride is slightly different) Check out this link from PCA about the RoWs. It has been posted before - http://web.archive.org/web/200307071...article_3.html To the OP - Call SunCoast

After just having spent a full day ( 0930 until 1630) one on one with the top alignment guy in the UK I would offer that taking some time to get a decent alignment is both worth while and something that does take more than an hour or so. 45 mins of that time was spent removing & replacing the front lower track control arms. But apart from that & a lunch break, the rest was spent discussing and dealing with alignment matters. I'll be the first to say that he could have done the job faster if he hadn't been taking the time to explain a lot of stuff as the work was carried out on the car though. This alignment was my post M030 install too. Details on the web page as always.

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I personally can align ANYONES car for $1000....trust me it will be perfect with state of the art equipment and year and years of experience doing nothing but alignments.... $1000 and its all yours (though my part will be just to drive it over and wait for it to get done, then drive it back to you) - Still $1000... any takers $200 max

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Can anyone confirm I have received the part I should have ? Here are the parts number I could get from the parts themselves, except the springs for which I can't see any part number on them so I took a picture to give an idea of lenght and also the number from the bag they were packaged in... Looking at the ruler, my springs seems to be in line with the PCA article: front 200mm and back 280mm, but I'd love to hear about the meaning of the top colors blue and orange. The PCA article don't mention those colors code but I see the article was made in 2002, so things might have changed since then.. KIT#: 000-044-500-27 'lowering kit' FRONT Springs: color: green/white - orange part : 996.343.531.19.504 Shocks: color: green dot part : 996.343.041.21 Sway: color: green dot part : 996.343.701.21 REAR Springs: color: green/white - blue part : 996.333.531.26.504 Shocks: color: green dot part : 996.333.051.34 Sway: color: none part : 996.333.701.26

I almost forgot... Is it normal for shocks to make fluid noise when they are 'shaken' ? WARNING annoying wobbly video, should be safe for work http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF9qMH8C1vo

Those are the same part numbers on my UK M030 kit.

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Not that I'm aware of. Call the vendor, send them the pics, send them the vid and send them a piece of your mind. $1100 cash is good money and to me a lot of $$$.

Part numbers same as my RoW M030, except my rear shocks are suffix 49 instead of 34. My research has indicated color codes have varied over the years, so I'm more inclined to verify part numbers - and mine match yours, except as noted.

Philooo - This are the parts numbers I got - Springs 996.333.531.11.504 996.343.531.11.504 Shocks 996.333.051.45 996.343.041.16 Sways 996.333.701.26 996.343.701.21 I had mine installed last year and I purchased for a fellow member who decided not to install the RoW on his car. He said he purchased from SunCoast as well. I did lots of research on this subject and my Spring part numbers were correct with one of previous posts made. I am not sure if I have the right parts or not for the RoW (Euro) M030 OR if what you have is the correct. By no means I am trying to hijack or worry you about what you got. Just trying to help All I can say is for piece of mind confirm with SunCoast on the part #s and use my part #s as referrence. Hope that helps.

I got mine from Sunset in Portland, and my kit number matched yours, Phil, with the same description "lowering kit". We have different #s than francars and no one, even in the Porsche dealership world, can tell me why part numbers are different and colors are different over the past several years. I know Sunset and Suncoast sell a ton of these kits, so I'd like to be confident they ordered us the right stuff, but I am as confused as you at the moment.

I talked to Ric at Suncoast and he checked for fluid noise: " I checked another set on the shelf, here is my findings: Front Shocks - Make a liquid noise while being shaken, and also during compression. It was fairly easy to compress the strut by hand. Rear Shocks - No noises while being shaken, no sounds during compression. It was difficult to compress this one by hand. " Seems like I got the right part and they are functional. He offered me to exchange them if I thought the threads were too bad. I will use a threader and see if it comes back perfect, if not I'll exchange them. My wife will be out of town next week so I'll install all this then, so I can take both parking spot and take my time. I see some people say they needed a special open ended nut socket to remove the front assembly, any suggestion on that ? the right way: or the diy way: