Ground Control 2.5" front coilovers

I got a Ground Control coilover kit from Jason @ Paragon Products. A definite must-buy from a company with great techincal expertise and exceptional customer-service. In today's fluid economy with competitive pricing, getting the best products at the lowest prices are commonplace. But service, that's worth paying for and I have no qualms about recommending Paragon Products!

Why 2.5" front coilovers?
There are numerous reasons to upgrade to a 2.5" front coilover suspension. These include:

 - easy ride-height adjustability (crucial for conner-balancing if you race)
 - quick and inexpensive spring-rate changes (from an infinite supply of 2.5" springs)
 - wider selection of inexpensive strut inserts (I used '84 944NA rebuildable struts in my '86 951)
 - allows use of WIDER wheels and WIDER tires
- see Wheels-ClearanceBeforeAfter.jpg and Wheels-FrontClearances.pdf

Remove stock struts & springs
Before jacking up the car and removing the stock struts, loosen the big nut on top of the strut piston-rod first. The weight of the car helps keep the piston steady. You can use an impact wrench. Or if the piston spins, depending upon your strut-insert type, you can use either an allen-key or small adjustable wrench to hold the piston-rod steady as you reach in with needle-nose vise-grips to loosen the nut. If that doesn't work, or you forgot to loosen the nut before taking the strut off the car, you can grip the strut-piston with some channel-lock pliers clamped in a vise.

Preparing the Coilover kit
Make sure you have all the components listed before you start. Nothing worse than having your car all apart and finding you need to run down to the hardware store. In addition to the '82-85 rebuildable strut housings, strut inserts, and coilover kit, I also got some 2" PVC tubing to shim the coilover collars and some 2mm thick angle reinforcements from Home Depot to shim the spindle-clamp.

Cut off Spring Perches
The first step is to cut off most of the stock spring perch. Cut it off in a circle around the strut, leaving a 5mm wide ledge protruding all around to support the new adjustable spring collars. To be safe, make sure you measure the diameter of the strut housing and spring collars (there are different sizes out there).

Install New Adustable Collars
The adjustable collars are several millimeters too large to fit snuggly on the strut body; even with the supplied O-ring padding. I've heard other cars with the Ground Control kit and they make clunking sounds over bumps when forces from the spring compressing causes the collars to move around on the strut. I decided to shim the entire length of the collar against the strut and epoxied the whole thing together to make one rigid part using this procedure:

Make Spindle-Clamp Shim
The width of the spindle where the strut clamps is 18mm on the 951 and 20mm on the 944NA cars. So we'll have to make a 2mm shim to fit. Take one side of the 2mm thick angle-irons you picked up earlier and lay it inside the 951 strut's spindle-clamp (don't get this mixed up with the 944NA strut). Trace the outline of the clamp on the plate as well as the contours of the bolt holes. Cut out the shim with any combination of jig-saw, hacksaws, drills and die-grinders you have. Once finished, put the shim inside the 951 strut and put the bolts through it to make sure everything lines up. Slide the shim back and forth to make sure it fits under both sides of the strut-clamp flush with the inside surface. Rotate the upper camber-adjuster bolt through 360-degrees to make sure there's no binding.

Elongate Upper Hole on 944NA Strut
Take the 2mm spindle shim yo