tomrc

Well I'm springing (sic) for a new suspension, sort of going for a full spec944 suspension. Koni's front and rear, 350lb springs, 30mm torsion, coil over kit, camber plates and poly bushings. I already have the m030 sways front and rear.

Now the question, I'm not sure I want to do the torsions and since I'll need to have it aligned anyway, what would be a reasonable cost to have the torsions installed? I'd rather faint at home instead of the Porsche mechanics shop. If it's over a certain amount I'll probably just take the time and do them myself.

Thanks,

knfeparty

don't leave the stock torsions with heavier springs up front. It will be awful. I haven't upgraded my tbars to 25.5 after putting m030 struts in the front and I can feel a major difference in the car. It's not a good one. Either get some rear coilovers (if that's legal for whatever you're doing) or the biggest tbars you can find.

Potomac-Greg

He's getting 30mm t-bars. That's a good match for the springs he's getting.

I have to believe that installing and indexing the t-bars is going to be a lot of labor time. If you know how to do it, and have the time, I'd do it.

I went coilovers in order to delete the t-bars for this reason. If I had easy access to a lift, I might have done differently.

knfeparty

I misinterpreted "I don't want to do the torsions." I've been on this same fence, but I haven't acquired the tbars just yet. It does look like a pain, but do you want to pay someone $1000+ to do it? I've heard it takes 12 hours or so. Do what you can; if you get stuck, then pay a mech.

Just try not to sledgehammer the car out of frustration.

jpk

My mechanic flat out told me he really didn't want to do it, and the job was relatively simple so I should do it myself. First attempt took me about 12 hours to swap out the bars in the old car. I took careful measurements to make sure I got the ride height dead on, and I did. A year later, I went back in to raise the rear ride height a bit, and it took maybee 5-6 hours to index the bars. I didn't have to measure so carefully since it was a "relative" adjustment; just moving the inner spline and outer splines a couple of notches. When I put the coilovers on the 968, it only took 3 hours or so to index the bars.

Look over the proceedure in clarks-garage.com. It'll give you a pretty good idea of whats involved.

Chwatson

12 hours isn't really realistic, in my opinion; maybe you're a beast though. having done it, i can tell you that, without lots of help, your arms get mighty tired. lifting, lowering, balancing; it all wears you out. the biggest problem, however, is with the bushings. leaving these things unloaded for a while makes them AWFULLY hard to put back in. bust out the lubricants if you plan on doing this at home. i don't know if polys make it easier or harder.

Chwatson

PS, it's not really THAT hard, but it can be hard to rationalize why you're using a 36" pry bar and so much force on some parts. i can almost guarantee that you'll get up several times and rock the car back and forth to make sure it'll be able to hold against the wrenching. it's one of those "wtf" moments.

bad_monkey

The way I saw it, was that I was going to take my car down to the workshop at my GF's family lakehouse, take a week or two about it, build a solid set of trestles, put the whole car up on there, strip everything down, clean and prep eeeeverything etc. Kind of a 944 holiday.

I think it's a good idea to do the torsion bar math roughly before you start the process - there's a link somewhere I've found that computes the effective spring rate for a certain torsion bar width. It's on my home PC, will post or PM. Then you can work out your ride height for a given index from there... at least it's going to help working out the correct indexing, but from what I hear you need to trial it a few times...

Then there's dialling in your suspension, ride heights, alignment - I have no idea about setting up the coilovers on the rear...

I'm going to take the opportunity to take a look at the underside of the car, and I'm brewing a mad scientist plan to build an undertray for the car from thin alu or maybe even kevlar skinned fibre glass...

I figure if I remove the underseal, the actual weight addition will be fairly low, and if I cut through the spare wheel well I should be able to add a diffuser....

Anyhow, getting OT so for me... My point was (if you didn't spot it) that it's best to plan to take a longer time about this process and not get too stressed about it

xsboost90

i dunno ive reset my torsions and then later deleted them- took maybe 4-5 hours at the most- but i think that included dinner.

tomrc

Thanks all, I think really I want it done faster, if I do it I figure 2 weekends, a lot of swearing, busted knuckles, probably a few more dents in the car. If I have someone else do it, drop it off, pick it up, and pay lots of cash. I have a really good Porsche shop near me that I've been wanting to stop in and have them do something for me just to get to know them. This might be a good thing to have them do if it doesn't cost thousands of dollars. Plus they always have some beautiful vintage Porsches around their shop.

I'll go talk to them and see what they'd charge me just for the heck of it.

I would go with coil overs but it'll take me out of my class, in autoX and I'd really like to stay close to 944 spec specs.

Thanks again, can't wait for all this to be installed.

M758

Here is a link to the t-bar proceedure. http://944spec.org/944SPEC/content/view/42/25/

If you take carefull measurements it can come out right the first time. It is long job, but not terribly hard. No special tools are needed and there is not alot to screw up.

How long it takes depends on if you swap bushings on the spring plate.

slvr993

It's not really all that bad. I did my buddies S2 last year. If you do a little research on here and take careful measurements you can easily have this done in a weekend. Having an air impact wrench helps a lot. It's not a technically difficult job, but it's a lot of wrenching. I can't imagine a shop will charge less than 8 hours to do it. If you decide to do it yourself PM me and I'll send you the procedure write up that another lister sent me.

Enjoy

Jeff

JimV8

The classifieds has a product that looks interesting. Those that can't see that ad you can email to , joeboysracingproducts@gmail.com and ask him about it. It shows a torsion bar protractor and claims to show how to re-index t bars in two hours without having to remove alot of stuff. $ 105.00. I'm not connected in any way.

schwank

Good timing on this post. I have done everything else on the car and the only thing left is to install the 30mm torsions (actually 34mm hollow) and new rear bushings. Funny thing is after all the other crap I've done, I'm still dreading this job. It just does not seem fun in any way.

tomrc

Well, I was quoted $900 to do my torsions. I guess I'll do them myself.