I'm wondering if we could ever just delete the rear torsion bars and go to a full coilover setup. I don't think it would be any more expensive (a coilover shock costs similar to the need to buy a new strut and new torsion bars) - I'm sure we'd have to get the shock tower mounts reinforced. I know some of the 944 Cup guys have done this. That would make rear ride height a very quick change.

If done right T-bars are set and forget.

I did t-bars in my 944 twice. First from stock 28 mm. THen from 28 mm to 30 mm when the 28's were not enough spring rate. Given out liimt to 30 mm it is the way to go. I made this swap in Jan 2003 and only did it once per t-bar rate. I have never had the need to adjust them again. Any minor ride height changes can be accomplished with the eccentrics in the spring plate.

Rear coil over cause two probelms.


1) increased cost due to a different shock.

2) no limit to overall spring rates. When you must run t-bars it puts a limit on the rear spring rates. This in turn puts a limit on front spring rates. These limits allow us to use the street performance Koni shock vs a proper and more expensive racing shock.


Again minor ride height changes are easy to do via the spring plates so we have no critical need to make ride height changes. Of couse you can do the t-bar hole thing if you really want to make changes.

Joel, the rear coilover would almost certainly be a performance advantage, leaving the 100+ current 944 Spec cars to make an expensive change to keep up. It may not be a big perfomance advantage, but some nevertheless.

It's not just the initial cost, but the cost to current racers/cars.

Another thing to consider on the rear coilover conversion is availability. I've only ever seen a ready-made product that does this for the late cars. That doesn't mean that somebody couldn't come up with one for the early cars (or even adapt the late one to fit), but I'm not aware of a current kit that claims to do this for them out of the box.

Hey Jeremy,

I would love to help just set a time. I'm busy up to Porsches at the point but might be free until the next race weekend. You need to do the spring plate bushings at the same time, the rest can wait if you need to.

Gary, if you,re interested we can do yours at the same time.

Ron

Thanks Ron. But I'm going to try to get mine done sooner, I'll probably get started this weekend.

The 9magazine article says to drill the t-bar cover and pry the endcap off, not even mess with the bushings. So...your saying I should basically do this procedure instead?

www.elephantracing.com/project/944/944springplatediy.htm

Also, is a 2" hole in the rocker big enough? The how-to says to cut a 3", but that seems big to me. It would suck to try and enlarge the hole later, though.