iX strut housing modification

[nando]

you definitely gotta balance it, but the ix just naturally understeers a little due to the AWD. you can try to eliminate it, but at that point the car actually becomes unstable.

[ForcedFirebird]

Under-steer is amplified with stiffer front springs/bar. When loosening the front, the car is able to rotate/pitch to the front corner, and plant the outside wheel, while allowing the inner wheel to make contact. When the springs/bar are/is too stiff, the inner front wheel tends to lift and lose traction, and without the transfer of weight, the front outer tire won't compress/camber and grip, it will "skate".

With rear-suspension under-steer, it tends to be from too much tow in, too soft bar/springs, or too much lock in the diff. Have to think reverse of drifters. They like toe out, exponentially stiff rear springs, no front sway bar, sloppy front springs, welded diff - this gives front grip, loose rear.

[nando]

I don't know why it would be unnecessary. In my experience the understeer tendency is way worse without the swaybar. You could try to mitigate that with super stiff springs, but you won't like the ride..

[aaron325ix]

Well I'm stuck with the H&R's again for a while but hopefully the Konis will be better with them than the Bilstein HD's I had before. Its great to see more detailed information on this though and I would like to see this thread keep going. Like I said I will probably go back to coils at some point and maybe find a better supplier than GC. I plan on doing a S52/S54 swap in the next five years so that will probably be the time I do it. Maybe ForcedFirebird will let me send the strut housings to him to do it as he has the experience already.

As for your set up Chris, is it really necessary to have the sway links or even the sway bar? I've been told by many that when you have a coil set up with stiff springs the sway bar/links are kind of unnecessary.

[nando]

I'm sure I had it written down somewhere in PMs or emails or text messages, but that's all long gone now!

[ForcedFirebird]

I definitely had the ix housing shortened too, and it was much more than 1/2". you're thinking about my ix Bilstein HDs that I spent a fortune on to have them shortened and rebuilt by Bilstein in CA. Well, they rode horrible, and also one of them exploded after like 3 months. I ditched those and went with Koni race inserts. Much better, still running them now.

I'm pretty sure it was 3" because after doing it, I think I could have done 2" as well and it would have been fine. 1" wouldn't have been worth the time though.

Yeah, now that you mention it, I recall Bilstein forgot to shorten the yellow tube and we did that here - stand corrected. I'm not sure it was quite 3". The pics are in Photobucket, not sure I can retrieve them.

EDIT: I was able to get to the photos. Holy cow, that was already 10yr ago! (pics are dated Aug 2012).
https://hosting.photobucket.com/albu...=278&crop=fill

https://hosting.photobucket.com/albums/qq202/Forced_Firebird/325ix%20coil%20over%20conversion/080612182523.jpg?width=450&height=278&crop=fill

[nando]

So the whole point of shortening the housing is to gain suspension travel (when lowered). The goal is to maintain, or improve, the ride quality when you lower the car. The stock IX has like 2-2.5" of travel. That's not very much, but it's good enough for stock use.

But when you put some H&R springs in there - you lose like 1" of that travel. As you can imagine, the remaining 1-1.5" is not great. Especially with the Bilstein HDs and their huge internal bump stops and stiff valving. You're basically using the bump stop as the spring at this point. the ride quality sucks.

The solution is to use a shorter strut insert that matches your ride height, and of course you need to shorten the strut tube to match. But that has *nothing* to do with your ride height - aside from whatever adjuster you decided to use. That's like people who think when you change from 15" to 16" wheels your ride height changes. Your ride height is controlled by the setting of your spring perches and the length of your springs, not how much you shorten the housings.

Of course you can shorten it too much - suspension droop is also important and is affected by using shorter struts. So obviously if you want a high ride height rally IX, you don't want to use shorter inserts (because they have less overall travel) or chop any length off your tubes. You can put height adjusters and any length springs you want on stock strut housings.

In any case, here's my current struts as the car sits today. You can see my Chinesium Ebay height adjusters - which, amusingly, seem to be easier to adjust and less problematic than the Ground Control version. It's currently sitting on 15X7.5" ET35 wheels. I also have a set of stock IX wheels and they clear just fine (I have a set of spacers that I run mostly for looks, although they are not necessary).


There's just no way cutting the tubes will result in your tires rubbing on the struts. It has nothing to do with anything, even with the stock wheels and tires. Before this set of tires (which are stock 205/55R-15), I've run 235/50R15 and 225/50R15 on the exact same wheels and suspension. Neither rubbed on the struts.

Also, under all the PNW road grime, admire ForcedFirebird's excellent work on the swaybar link mount. I'm pretty sure it's just box tube he cut and welded in the spot I chose (adjusting for my expected ride height and adjuster length). It doubles as the lower spring perch which was pretty clever, and I get to use the stock ix swaybar links - which, honestly, are just better than aftermarket. Unless you like replacing them every 2-3 years I guess.

Before this setup, I had GC coilovers with stock length struts and regular ix Konis. The ride was ok, but the travel was still the same as before and you really couldn't lower it beyond what you got with H&R sports, so the height adjusters were effectively pointless. I still have those housings in the garage, I should measure them and figure out what I had cut out of the tubes I'm running now.

But if the GC guy that messaged you says I'm just an idiot running VW shocks (I'm not) and my tires rub (they don't) and I my swabar links aren't connected (they are).. Fuck them. They must forget that I was one of their earliest IX customers, and there couldn't have been very many of us!

[nando]

Might recall doing a job similar to this. :P

The b8 housings on your strut inserts were shortened 3", not the knuckle/housing that is "IX specific". Feel free to measure your custom housings against the stock ones, but i want to say it is .5" change, measured from top of the threads to the knuckle. The ix has a unique sway bar mount, shorter inserts, equivalent spring perch, both share the unique 48mm x 1.5mm threaded collar nut. This is common information in the shop, we have a threading station just for this.

I definitely had the ix housing shortened too, and it was much more than 1/2". you're thinking about my ix Bilstein HDs that I spent a fortune on to have them shortened and rebuilt by Bilstein in CA. Well, they rode horrible, and also one of them exploded after like 3 months. I ditched those and went with Koni race inserts. Much better, still running them now.

I'm pretty sure it was 3" because after doing it, I think I could have done 2" as well and it would have been fine. 1" wouldn't have been worth the time though.

[nando]

yeah, you're better off just getting somebody to do them for you. My rear adjusters are still GC and they're totally seized, if I ever want to do something different back there I'll have to cut them off like you did!

their camber plates for the IX are pretty sweet, but no idea what the quality is of them now, or if they even sell them.

[aaron325ix]

1" isn't enough. I'm pretty sure my current housings are 3" shorter. 2" is definitely doable. I'm not using VW struts, lol.

They aren't going to hit unless you're running super high offset wheels anyway. I run stock ix wheels on my car all the time (with snow tires). I'm not even sure what you'd hit? the original strut hats are way bigger than GC adjusters.

Also, it's not hard to fab a new swaybar link out of some box tube. Or cut off the original one and reposition it.

Appreciate the responses but seeing as I couldn't get a real definitive answer, especially from the bros at ground control, coupled with the hesitation to cut into original iX parts I chickened out and went back to H&R sports with Koni sports and have it almost buttoned back up. IMO ground control is the suspension version of Miller. Poor customer service, never return emails, always trying to upsell instead of answering or researching questions really soured me with them. I may go back to coils some day but it wont be with them.

As E30Andy showed above I had to go through a couple of reinforced cutting wheels on my Dremel to get all the GC crap off.

[ForcedFirebird]

1" isn't enough. I'm pretty sure my current housings are 3" shorter. 2" is definitely doable. I'm not using VW struts, lol.

They aren't going to hit unless you're running super high offset wheels anyway. I run stock ix wheels on my car all the time (with snow tires). I'm not even sure what you'd hit? the original strut hats are way bigger than GC adjusters.

Also, it's not hard to fab a new swaybar link out of some box tube. Or cut off the original one and reposition it.

Might recall doing a job similar to this. :P

The b8 housings on your strut inserts were shortened 3", not the knuckle/housing that is "IX specific". Feel free to measure your custom housings against the stock ones, but i want to say it is .5" change, measured from top of the threads to the knuckle. The ix has a unique sway bar mount, shorter inserts, equivalent spring perch, both share the unique 48mm x 1.5mm threaded collar nut. This is common information in the shop, we have a threading station just for this.

[nando]

2" is for RWD configurations. AWD is more like .5". If you dropped the IX 2" in the front, the axle boots will rub spindles.

we're not talking about how much lowering - it's about how much is cut out of the tubes. You can cut 2" out of the tubes and still run stock ride height, but you gain a bunch of travel. Also 2" lowering on an ix is entirely doable. I think I'm at like -2 1/4" right now - used to be another 1/4" lower, but I got tired of scraping speed bumps.

also you did my housings and it was definitely more than 1/2" cut out, and I'm way lower than 1/2" from stock.

[nando]

That response from GC irritated me so much I went out and got a picture. I have miles of clearance - you're not going to hit anything with shorter housings, unless they leave the stock perches on for some reason. I'll post up the pic later when I have time to upload it.

ForcedFirebird did my housings, and of course I documented it in the ix section of E30tech (which at the time, was the place to be if you had an ix). All of that is gone now but I'm pretty sure I did 3", but I also used a longer adjuster (no name brand chinesium from Ebay, which ironically, have held up better than my GC adjusters).

[ForcedFirebird]

so now the guys at GC are saying they cant take 2 inches out of the strut housing as it will interfere with the side wall of the tire. Seems like most everyone of you who has done it has taken exactly that much out without problems.

2" is for RWD configurations. AWD is more like .5". If you dropped the IX 2" in the front, the axle boots will rub spindles.

[nando]

1" isn't enough. I'm pretty sure my current housings are 3" shorter. 2" is definitely doable. I'm not using VW struts, lol.

They aren't going to hit unless you're running super high offset wheels anyway. I run stock ix wheels on my car all the time (with snow tires). I'm not even sure what you'd hit? the original strut hats are way bigger than GC adjusters.

Also, it's not hard to fab a new swaybar link out of some box tube. Or cut off the original one and reposition it.