My question is how much space should there be between the top of the strut locking nut and the bottom of the spring perch? And for that matter what is the bare minimum?
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what you did to this car is like getting a supermodel naked and willing to do anything you please. now here you are faced with ths once in a lifetime opportunity and then you squander it by making her fuck you in the butt with a 24" strap on. you are a sad, silly little boy. -
Don't have exact measurements but if you drop the car more then 2" from stock height you really need to seriously consider shortening your struts. IE3 springs drop you 2" and are about the lowest springs you can get without going to a coilover.
When I went coilover (with Koni DAs shortened), after chopping about 2" out of the strut and welding I placed my mount at about the same location as the stock spring perch. The result is at max height I probably had a 2.5" drop but with almost the same amount of shock travel as a stock car. Any more drop and its bearly streetable unless you live in a land of near perfect roads an no speedbumps.SM 19 - Serial Destroyer of Cars
Turbo '89 325i - It lives! Now the question is for how long?
2SlowR
cing.com -
The distance from the top of the tube to the perch can vary depending on who installs the kit. The most important thing i sto make sure that they are the same on both sides (obviously). :P
As for the bare minimum...I'm not entire sure of what you are driving at. Different spring rates will compress different amounts with the perch at the same height. Just as an example, good practice is to have the top of the threaded sleeve even with the top of the tube, and the perch welded to the tube directly beneath it. For those wanting to run stock-length tubes, I include 3.25" threaded sleeves with my kits. For shortened struts, 2.25" works just fine. I don't find it necessary to shorten the tubes more than that because the shocks I include are already reduced travel shocks...so you don't end up losing much, if any travel.- Jason
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For my car w/ 500 front and 850 rear unshortened housings I used about 2.5" of shock travel during normal street, autocross and track driving. For rally situations I had the ride height set higher, dampers set a bit softer and used around 4" of travel.
With 6" front springs, on the street I have about 4" of total travel available, about 5.5" when set all the way up. Shortened my bump stops one inch and have yet to bottom out on them. Easy way to see what is happening is put some zip ties around the strut shafts, push them down on top of the nuts and look at them after driving.
I think the ideal setup for my goals would be to shorten the housings and use taller springs (same ride height with additional room for shock travel when lowered). Maybe next winter I'll do that. :)
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