I finally got the Bilstein Damptronics installed this past weekend and aligned to GT3 specs. I replaced the front drop links and rear toe kit by Tarett. Photos were taken from iphone so sorry for the crappy picture. The car is drop about an inch all around. I had to raise the driver side rear up a tad as it was rubbing on the fender. I have 20' HRE P40's. First picture is the BEFORE PICTURE!

 

The car looks great. How is the ride compared to stock?

 

Looks great. Excellent choice in wheels.

 

I bet you love the change...it completely transforms the car. Congrats.

 

An inch is 25mm - what with your 20" wheels, you are going to rattle your teeth out over anything other than marble smooth tarmac!

Doesn't sound very accurate though your ride heights (and thereby corner balancing) if you are raising each wheel independently depending on whether they are rubbing or not. As such I assume you have made these mods more for show than improved handling...

 

+1 yeah, how is the ride quality ?

 

Your car looks amazing, I love the set-up. The wheels look awesome,
quick question, where did you get the center caps??

 

Looks great man!! Still sunny in TX.

 

+2
Ride Quality?

 

When it was originally lowered over an inch, i felt every single bump. I decided to raise it just a tad and now it feels perfect. If feels like you drive with the PASM button on all the time.

When I initially measure the car, the height of each corner was off a tad. I would say by 1/8 inch. However, I raised each side to match the other and thus I only had to raise the back end up to match the other side. I did not get a corner balance since I plan to realign in another month or so after they settle and after which time may get a corner balance. After reading numerous thread, unless you are going to the track, you will not notice the difference. I lowered the car to remove the wheel gap.

I got the caps from when I bought the wheels used from Alan at wheelenhancement You may email him and see where he got them from. I am getting a set of HRE as well.

Thanks, I do love the wheels and the drop. At first I wasn't into it, but it's grown on me.

 

Beautiful! I **love** dark wheels and black-out windows on a light silver car.

BTW, my car is down 22mm in front and the fender doesn't rub at all. So you might be down more than that at first? Did you measure using the diagram I sent you?

Any plan for Techart 1 front lip? Congrats & enjoy the car in good health.

 

The rear driver side was rubbing. The wheel had some marks on it and that's how I figured it was rubbing. The fronts are ok. My friend and I just did the measurement from the ground up to the fender. I already scrape quite a bit with the normal lip, so I don't plan on getting Techart 1 front lip. Will get it realign in a month or so.

 

Good that you found the problem! If you were rubbing the rear fender that must have been quite a bit of lowering initially; I don't recall reading this often.

For anyone reading this and interested, if you lower the rear beyond 25mm, and the front beyond 30mm, the risk, from what I've read -- no direct experience, is that the shaft hit the internal bump stops. The sign of this would be that car becomes suddenly stiff whenever the coilover is compressed to the limit of its now very small range of movement (no compliance to coilover!) and unstable at high speed.
I believe this (the unusual stiffness) is exactly what tranman was describing in the post above.

 

You know what, I am going to start a new trend and start challenging this thinking. Corner balancing is like sticking a beer mat under one of the legs of a wobbly bar table. You really CAN feel the difference after it is done, the car just feels so 'balanced' for want of a better word. I wouldn't drive another sports car again (even on public roads) without this.

As Can mentioned, you need to be very sure you are measuring ride heights from the correct locations too. Fender measurements are WILDLY inaccurate!

My accurate alignments (+/- 1 minutes = 60th of a degree), ride-height adjusts (+/- 1 mm), and corner balancing (pretty much 50:50) are probably the main reason why my 997.1 Turbo handles better than the new 997.2 Turbo does...

 

+1 on corner balancing. BTW did Tarett include little rubber booties to go over the rod ends on your drop links? A few of us here in Rain City had to get those to quiet a perceived noise coming from the links. It was an elegant solution to a non problem. Turned out the bushings on the sway bars (H&R) required some waterproof silicone grease.