Coils Over Easy

In the last post I ended it by mentioning that a lot of the puzzle pieces to start on the coilovers had arrived.  Well those and plenty of more parts have shown up, and progress has obviously been made:

The Front:

The front was pretty straight forward and very similar to the way the Hachi coilovers were done. The biggest exception being that I didn’t shorten the tubes here.

The Rear:

The rear was a completely different adventure.  I started with a spare set of rear struts and cut them to see what my options were.  Since they were too narrow to except most of the off the shelf Toyota style strut inserts, I decided to start with blank tubes.  I made this even more complex by deciding to try and add some camber adjustment as well.

The Current Stance:

With a about an inch of slack in the front and a few turns of preload in the rear things are setting pretty close to where I would want them for the street.  The transmission pan has about 4 inches of clearance which should be enough to keep me out of trouble. The camber is at maximum negative at all 4 corners in the photo.  Now for the down side.  The toe is absolutely crazy.  What you can’t see in the pic is that the wheels are actually turned about 3/4 of a turn to appear straight. A quick tape measure check across the tire tread showed about 4″ of toe in.  FOUR INCHES!  I have new inner and outer tie rods here already, and have some more parts on the way to give me some stuff to play with, but I’m not sure what it will actually take to dial this all in.

Current Parts List:

KYB 365064.  Originally meant for the front of an ST162 Celica, AE92 Corolla, or rear of and SW20 MR2. I started with 4 as a starting point.

T3 Upper camber plates for an AE92 Corolla (yes the Corolla shared the same upper strut mount).

Swift 5k and 4k spring rates for front and rear respectively, as part of the T3 “ST162” Weld On coilover kit.

T3 Strut Tubes.  I never did find these on the website, but they are available if you need them.

With this much toe in, we aren’t test driving it yet, so many of these specs could change sooner than later.  I’ll try to update this thread if or when they do, but to be safe keep reading the new posts.

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