Just a quick little How To for installing Ground Control coil-overs on the front of your car. It may be a bit vague for those of you with no coil-over experience, sorry about that.

This does require minimal welding if you want to do it right.

I did it at the same time as I installed Koni Sport strut inserts (yellows). The How To for that can be found in the How To section on V6Z24.com. Ground Control offers several different upper bearing assemblies depending on what struts you have. I don't know the diameter of the stock 3rd gen struts, so if you decide to us this How To with stock or some other brand of struts, talk to Ground Control about it and they can get you the parts you need.

The way I did it is not the only way to do it. For a lower ride, you need to do more work (I'll talk about this at the end). Keep in mind, the only reason I did this was to have the ability to corner weight the car, not to drop it to the weeds.

Parts needed-
strut housings (stock or with cartridges)
3rd gen Ground Control kit with 56mm sleeve (comes with- lower perches, threaded sleeves, springs, upper perches, bearings, and adjustable perches) make sure it has 56mm sleeves, the normal kit has 52mm sleeves!
3rd gen upper strut mount
3rd gen bump stop (or equivalent) available by itself or with the boot both dealer and aftermarket

1) You need to cut the stock spring perch off the strut body. I did it with a 4" cut off wheel. Do not cut the weld off, since it marks where you need to attach (weld) the new lower perch. You can also see that my strut housing is cut down to accept the Konis.


2) The GC 56mm sleeve is 4" long, since its not the one spec'd for 3rd gens. You will need to modify it to fit. I ended up cutting 1.5" off mine to be lower than the top of the strut cartridge. Yours may be different, depending on the struts you're using. This is important, since you don't want the upper perch coming in contact with the sleeve.


3) Now cut the bumpstop down so it looks like this.


4) This is what the finished product should look like.



As I mentioned before, there are different ways to do this. I ran into some problems doing it exactly like the GC directions showed, and my car was sitting on the bumpstop (as some of you saw at the Bash). After about an hour on the phone and many different pictures sent back and forth with GC, we decided the best thing for me to do is what you saw above. If you want to go lower than a 1.5" tire to fender gap, read on.

Since there is an unknown difference somewhere between the 3rd gen and 2nd gen strut dimensions (I thought about this for a long, long time and couldn't figure it out), the lower perch needs to be moved down, but its not that simple, since you need to move the top of the strut down with it. In order to accomplish that, you need to get a shorter strut cartridge (easily available by talking to Koni) and cut the strut housing down farther. This will essentially move only the lower perch, while the upper perch remains in the same position (if you can understand that). If you just move the perch, and not the top of the cartridge, you run the risk of blowing the cartridge by bottoming it out. The ideal position for the adjustable lower perch at a street setting is about halfway on the threaded sleeve, as you can see, mine is almost all the way down. If anyone attempts this, please let us all know how it turns out.

As for the rear, you're on your own there. You can do something similar to me, with Afco adjustable perches welded into the axle, or research a coil-over setup from another car (good luck with that one. I started there, and kept hitting dead ends, both due to design and strength of our inner fenders, as well as nothing coming close for valving, length, and travel).

very nice post. lots oh useful info. this should be STICKEY because i know lots of people are leaning towards coilovers lately


People say that what doesn't kill you in this life
will make you stronger. I'm not sure if that is true
or not, but i do know one thing-You have to learn from
it and it has to make you better.......it has to.......

good job James.

what are you doing for rear coil overs?

and yeah... it was defently sittin funny at the bash


...

I used Afco (stock car 5" spring stuff) adjustable perches welded upside down where the factory spring perches used to be in the axle. All I have to do now, ic cut off the upper factory perch, and install a "bucket" (just like what it sounds like, a bucket to fit the spring in) in the unibody "frame rail". Then I'll have 2" up or down adjustment from ride height both front and rear. So, they aren't exactly coil-overs, but thats ok, because the only real benefit of a coil over is height adjustment, and I have the same thing, but alot simpler.

Heres a pic-

your rear looks very similar to my setup, mines not adjustable though, i basically had to weld in a place for the spring to mount on the unibody and the lower swing arm, i ended up making new arms because mine were looking kinda nasty with the rust, how much did those coilovers cost you ? i was going to replace the front struts on my car im thinking i might try and do the setup you have.

Ground Control sells half kits (front or rear) for $250 shipped. I just called them up and ordered the 3rd gen kit with 56mm sleeves and they shipped it. You have your choice of spring rates too. Mine are- 525 front 300 rear. I will probably end up bringing the rear up to around 400 though.