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Assembling of Tech-Art Springs and Spacer With my first car I went over to Stuttgart to let the people of Tech-Art assemble the springs, spacers and do the alignment. Now it is too far to Stuttgart and I have more room in my garage that I can do the assembling by myself. For the alignment I would go to my Porsche dealer.
To begin with, I had to jack up the car in a safe way, and I don't wanted to use any other point beside the four jacking points. For that reason I build these wood stands. They enable me to jack the car safely on the jacking points. Regular stands require that the car be lifted at least 4 inch away from these points.
I checked the clearance between tires and body by jacking the wheels up while the springs have been disassembled. On the front axle there is enough room for a 15mm spacer, the clearance is always >5mm in any steering wheel position. On the rear axle with 23mm spacers the clearance becomes very small <2mm. I decided to limit the spring action 15mm for safety reasons.
On the rear axle there is 20mm more spring action because of a shorter factory limiter so even by limiting 15mm, there is still 5mm more than at the front axle. I have not experienced any adverse influence while driving.
The assembling of wheel spacers must be done very particular, because the car reacts very sensitively to spacers. You must be aware of the fact that spacers don't improve the handling. They cause the car to be a little more fidgety on road indentions. I accept this, because the car looks a lot better with spacers. Particular assembling of the spacers and fine balancing of the wheels to <3g can limit the adverse influence. I would recommend removing the paint from the contact face of hub and putting a thin layer of the grease on it, which comes with the spacers.
The Tech-Art springs, made by Eibach, lower the car 1inch. On my car a correct alignment wasn't possible any more. The chamber was so far out of tolerance, that I had concerns about tire wear. There was no way around extending the adjustment slot for the chamber on the front axle and toe on the rear axle to come at least close to the tolerances. The toe adjustment has to be altered because if chamber adjustment screw is set to the minimal position that equals -2.0 degrees, the minimal possible adjustment for toe ends up at +0.7 degrees.
The extending of the adjustment slots, front axle 2.5mm and rear axle 2.2mm was necessary to allow an alignment close to the tolerance.
While there is almost no comfort lost by driving with 17’’wheels, you will experience a huge lost of comfort if 18’’wheels are mounted. The Boxster let’s you know exactly what the road condition is. Astoundingly the suspension still takes the big bumps like railroad tracks fabulously. You will bury the wish of having sport anti roll bars, because rolling is almost eliminated. Personally, I like the handling of the car with Tech-art springs a lot, but if you like to ride comfortably and your car is equipped with 18’’wheels, you better keep your hands off those springs. |
