Okay - Michael goaded me enough about not having my car ready, so I decided to take a day off to do the suspension. Front suspension - easy (though I am curious how much suspension travel you guys have when the car is loaded - it looks a lot closer to the top than I would expected)

Rear suspension was going really well - I took all my before measurements and I plugged them into the Joe spreadsheet (thanks so much for this!!!!) Got everything apart and back together on the ground and I tried to set the banana bar to hub centerline to 7.5". I cannot get it close. It is either 5" or 9". I rotated the bar on the inside and on the outside and I cannot get it close enough. Does anyone have any suggestions?

One other thing that may be irrelevant, but... When it is all together, buttoned up, there is a small amount of play on the banana bar - less than an inch, but it is there and I thought I would ask. I am taking my measurement with the bar pushed down, to be consistent and take out the play.

Thanks for any help. Roll cage and seats are next if I can get this fixed

I don't know if this will help but I just redid my rear suspension yesterday because the bushings were binding and of course I took several measurements before I took it apart. Putting it back together took 19 tries to get the right side back close to where it was when I took it apart. Because the splines are different inside and out, I would have to rotate the inside one spline, refit the outside and rotate as necessary, check the scribe marks and measurements and repeat. The left side for some reason went in with 2 tries.

I've done a LOT of torsion bars over the years(I grew up in the southern california VW scene and owned many street/drag bugs plus offroaders) and almost all have had slight amounts of play in both the springplate and the swingarm/banana arm so I would imagine that's also normal for the 944. Mine had about 1/2" play or slop on both sides.

Good luck!

That makes some sense. When I pull the cover off, the inside always comes out first and it is very difficult to get a proper relative change between inside and outside. That being said, I marked the side plate relative to housing and I am not moving it more than 2 degrees, but I get a pretty radical change. Can you send me your phone number to my e-mail ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )? I would love 5 minutes on the phone with you.

Does anyone remember the distance from the top of the banana bar to the centerline of their hub as a reference for a 30mm bar? With 4 - 4 1/2" ground clearance, it would be interesting to know if the 7.5" passes the sniff test. It seems like I remember one of the entries to the forum being around 9"

Thanks

Dang Michael- we just did this to Jason's car at the build party last weekend- I wish I'd paid attention.

Have you tried calling the Commander (Michael)? He could tell you over the phone, I think he is on the road to Sebring right now.

PM me if you need his #.

Yes, please - I lost his card...

Just emailed you...