I had Strano Bilstiens, stock WS6 springs, Strano 35mm 22 adj. rear sway bars, UMI K-Member, Spohn Adj rear LCA, LCA relocation brackets, Auminum Panhard. The car handled great, the ride was nice but had that stock ride height look, which at the time was ok as I had a lot of cleaning up to do with Long tubes and cutouts for ground clearance.
When I installed the 12 Bolt rear end the car didn't hook that well over choppy road conditions, this was do to the extra weight.
I always thought coilovers were cool looking and I liked the ability to adjust the ride height. I found lots of drag coilover focused shocks but I love to carve corners. I also had to address the rear ride height issue. Yes KW was definitely something I looked hard at. So I picked up a set of Koni DA to solve my rear end issue. The car handled better but I couldn't get my eyes of those sexy black and gold Penskes. So I called Unbalanced Engineering to have them bulid me a set. Thats also where the adjustable spring perch idea was from.
So this is my set up now, and I am blown away with the ride quality with the lowered stance. I really rides smooth and jar free over almost all road bumps and pot holes.
Front:Spohn upper and lower chro-moly A-arms, top delrin bushing bottom have del-sphere joints, Umi K-member, Penske 7500DA with torrington bearings in the top perch, Hyperco 650# spring.
Rear:Spohn adj LCA chro-moly with del-shere/poly ends, Spohn Chro-moly panhard del-sphere ends, LCA relocation brackets. Spohn Tunnel mount torque arm with a custom tunnel mount cross brace, that ties the sub-frame connectors and inverts a poly tranny mount and uses it to isolate the torque arm from the body. Koni DA shocks with and AFCO adj. perch and Hyperco 175# 5x11" spring.

 

Stance looks good! Looks like you picked some good stuff out!

 

Stance looks great, how much do you have in the penskes?? PM me if you don't want to post it up.

 

they were $1200.00 springs and torrington bearings perches That included the custom valving specs.

 

damn thats quite expensive, but I'm sure its worth it. Have you ever ridden in a car with konis? How do they compare?

 

no, I haven't but Koni are 430.00 a piece plus 75.00 for the springs thats $1010.00 and they use the usually rotted rubber upper mount (that might need replacing). If I didn't have the optional bearings for my perches the price is pretty close, I also gain about 1.5" of suspension travel over the stock mounting system and my ride height is infinitely adjustable.

 

Looks great man. We talked a little bit in my C/O thread. I can't wait to get my Penske's on too. It'll be like a whole new car I'm sure.

 

Yeah I remember pm me if you got any questions or whatever.
Ed

 

Yeah I thought about that shortly after I posted. Not too bad everything considered, and removing the rubber isolator is deffinately a good option plus the added travel

This is deffinately my next option if I don't like my Edelbrock setup that going on my car this winter

 

Awesome looking setup.
With that 1.5" extra travel do you have any issues with the front tires hitting the fenders or scraping at all?

 

I haven't scrapped yet as far as I can tell.

 

That's awesome. I have the koni/strano set up and love it but wish it was abit lower in the front and some less harshness on our wonderful jersey roads.

Any more details bout that crossmember/tq arm set up?

 

Strano was actually the one that talked me out the monstrosity I was going to make, so I came up with this:
1. It increased ground clearance my old Spohn tunnel mount always dragged there.
2. It increased chassis stiffness and reduced body flex by connecting not only at the tunnel bace mounts but it clamps firmly to the subframe connectors.
3. I decreases ride vibration by placing an inverted poly-trans mount between the torque arm and the crossmember.

 

Nice stance!
BTW, are those 12" front springs, and did you relocate the rear bumpstops?

 

Are you saying these new front shocks have roughly 4.4" of travel?

The stockers have 3.5" travel, times the 1.7 to 1 motion ratio giving you the stock 6" of wheel travel.

4.4" at the shock would give you 7.5" of wheel travel.

I'm curious if you checked to make sure the tire doesn't go too high under full compression. If it should, some packers would bring it back down.

Technical stuff aside, I'm also curious how your front rides so well. I'm having a hard time believing it. I've tried about a 650 spring and it rode too rough for my tastes and that was with the stock rubber upper and lower mounts. Maybe your tires are smoother riding than mine were?
What tires are those?

BTW, thumbs up, it looks bad ***.

 

Woah, I see these front shocks have 7" of travel!
That's almost 12" of wheel travel. Normally the rubber bushings would restrict extension travel if the shock has been removed, but I think you have rod end lower control arm bushings. What limits your extension travel?

 

^^Thats a very good question. But I know I have seen a handful of guys using this setup and are very happy with it overall and I have seen no complaints from too much travel.

I'm curious to see the answers to this though

 

Okay, I thought BRD-PREY was the first to use these 7500DA. I'll do some looking.

Generally speaking, whenever a generic shock (one not made for the specific vehicle in question) is used, you have to do a lot of measuring to get the height of the upper mount just right. If it's too high, the wheel will rub the fender under compression. Too low and the tire won't go high enough. Causing you to lose valuable travel.

 

Check on Frrax.com there are a few guys on there using the penskes IIRC I know the BRD-PREY ins't the first guy to use them, but they aren't that popular. I personally like the fact that the remove the upper mount and replace it with a solid piece of metal and a heim type joint. The factory rubber is garbage IMHO

 

Since the factory mount functions well and lasts much, much longer then any rod-end, I wouldn't call it garbage. On the other hand, I do think it's overly complicated. I prefer simple. Plus I like being different.