Kirk's Ride...

[Kirk]

Originally Posted by Franco

Hi Kirk, your car is starting to excite me more than your assistant
On a serious note did you think of clear coating those aluminum parts so they shine forever.
Love your ride

Thanks Franco! YES, I definitely thought about clear coating the aluminum parts. I'm going to see how long they last with just the waxy coating of Mother's Polish on them before I go that route. I garage my car and usually just drive it on Fridays and weekends. I also live in sunny California so the car never sees snow and seldom sees rain. So the parts may actually stay pretty nice for a long time without the clear coat. We'll see and if I need to paint them I will. That's an easy project. Thanks for the suggestion!

Kirk

[Kirk]

I've got one of the front coilovers in and will get the second done soon. What a royal PITA. Running remote reservoirs without quick disconnects is no fun, but do-able. It doesn't help that there is very limited info on the web. I'm waiting on upper spring seats for the rear, so those won't go in for a couple weeks or so.

After using a jig saw and several Dremel attachments I enlarged the hole above the front shock enough to allow the reservoir to pass through. Now it's mounted in the front trunk next to the battery. I'll clean up the install with the nice brackets to make it look better. The reservoir has a valve on it where you can adjust the nitrogen pressure between 150 to 250 psi. The nitrogen pushes on oil inside the reservoir that then creates oil pressure inside the shock. This is basically a way to increase the oil capacity of the shock without making the shock itself bigger and without increasing the mass of the moving shock. Pretty kewl...

Here's the reservoir mounted:



Here's the shock mounted. You can see the reservoir hose behind it that runs to the bottom of the shock. The lower helper spring keeps the main spring in place, even at the extremes of wheel movement. There's a bump stop under the dust shield. Gotta love those big Porsche/Brembo calipers too.



The camber plate is a Schnell piece that gave me TONS of front negative camber plus a solid mount at the top instead of flexible rubber.



Kirk

[kabel]

^awesome, they look even better installed. And yes Kirk's "assistant" is very nice indeed, but she is not a permanent installation on the car now is she?!

[Kirk]

Finally got my JRZ coilovers done! What a royal pain in the ass! In the front I got the front remote reservoirs hard mounted (no more zip ties) with some custom brackets and I had to remove the shocks again (3rd time) to get them shimmed up a little more. Fit seems to be just about perfect now, ride height is set, and alignment is near perfect (still needs some toe work though). I'm running about -2.3 degrees camber with the camber plates. Only down side is that the sperical bearings in the camber plates are damn noisy. I'll have to get used to that.

Here's the new reservoir mount in the front:



The rear shocks turned out to be a lot more work than what I had expected. It turns out that you can't get the reservoir through the shock mount in the wheel hub because the drive axle is in the way. The solution? I had to remove the rear axles. The only problem is that they're held on with 340 ft lbs of torque. I could NOT get the nuts off the axles. I thought maybe a local shop would loosen them for me, but I second guessed that as I doubt anyone would let me drive home with loose axle nuts. Finally, as a last resort, I borrowed an impact socket, 3/4" drive breaker bar, and 4' (yes four FOOT) cheater bar from the millwrights at my work (they work for me, so I get some special treatment). I got the nuts off, axles out, shocks in, and remote reservoirs run to the rear trunk. Then I used a HUGE torque wrench from my work to get the axle nuts tight again. All in all it took two weekends of work. The car is way too low now, so I still need to raise it up more. It's a bit of a game though as the wheels can rub on the outside fender and can rub the coilover adjustable perches. I need to raise the perches just enough to get them past the rub point. The 275 mm tires on 10" rims are just pushing the absolute limit of what can fit. I'll go to 265 mm tires once these wear out (too soon I'm afraid). I'm running about -3.0 degrees camber in the rear, but I haven't done an alignment yet.

Here's the remote reservoir mounting in the rear trunk:





I won't really push it until I get ride heights set better and a more thorough alignment done, but some quick test drives have suggested that the car is now unf_cking believable. It corners so damn hard and fast that it will make your neck snap. It is just totally insane for public road driving as the limits of adhesion are so extremely high and I've still got the shocks set to their softest setting. I have GOT to autocross this car can take it to the track!

I'm also working on a nitrogen setup. I've got the valves, gauges, regulator and tank. I've just got a friend making some custom hose for me. Then I'll be able to adjust the nitrogen pressure to get the ride stiffness where I want it.

[Kirk]

One more mod this last weekend. As long as I had the front of the car jacked up and both shocks out to re-shim them, I thought it would be a good time to install my latest trick mod. It's an OEM front anti-sway bar from a Porsche 996 GT3. This is the preferred sway bar for Boxsters as it's much beefier than stock and is 5-way adjustable. The only problem is that you have to use aftermarket sway bar links to fit it and adjust for the different hole positions on the bar.

Here's the GT3 bar compared to stock. Stock is on top and is a little under 24 mm in diameter. The GT3 bar is on the bottom and is 27 mm.



Here you can see the adjustment holes on the GT3 bar compared to stock.



Here's the new end link (bottom), which is adjustable, compared to stock (top). Think it will be a bit stronger?



Here are a couple photos of it installed, not much to see really. I've got it on the softest setting for now to limit understeer until I get a spare $450 to buy the Tarett aftermarket adjustable sway bar to go in the rear. I may actually stiffen it up a bit for more understeer as I got the car sideways today on the street with snap oversteer and it's pretty abrupt (although I was doing a heroic move at the time, so it wasn't a total surprise). I may want a little more understeer for now until I get used to the new suspension and then dial it back more towards neutral once I get a rear bar.

[Kirk]

I had my car and camera at work today, so I snapped some pics at lunch. I had the top up because it was a bit chilly today...







You can see how low the rear is. The tires are almost tucked up into the wheel well. It rubs even if I corner hard! I'll get it raised up this weekend if I have time.

I got my nitrogen filling rig done for my shock reservoirs, but I didn't have enough bottle pressure to set them. So instead I pulled the valve cores on all the tires to deflate them, and then refilled them all with nitrogen. Woo Hoo - 10 more horsepower!!!

Kirk

[djomlas]

very nice progress man
i love your car (aside from the til light, but that was beaten to death already).

how do u like the new suspension?