Suspension upgrades for the 996

Spring is always a busy time in the garage. Snowboards are put away and events start to populate the calender. While there is always the opportunity for a cheeky 10 days final fling on the slopes in early April, with the snow this year being variable it is unlikely we will chance another run.

A couple of up and coming events piqued our interested, with one being a track day in France put on by 911 Motorsports Belgium and the other, a club event in Norway which we attended last year in the 911. The current thinking is that we take the 928 up to the arctic circle and down to the event and the 911 to the track day in France. This means mobilising quickly to get both vehicles prepared as a five thousand miles through Nordic spring and two full days of track action means that both cars need meticulous preparation if the events are to progress without the need for road or track side spannering.

In the interim we have been gathering up parts to rebuild the C4S’s suspension almost totally. After months of research and advice from specialists and fellow 9Werks members we have gone for a Spyder Performance rebuild kit which covers everything from coffin arms right the way through to dog bones, drop links and a myriad of other bits of aluminium componentry. I have elected to go the route of polybushes and paid a bit extra to have these factory fitted by Spyder Performance. These duly arrived in a massive box filled with more boxes neatly packaging shiny alloy bits and the size of the task at hand slowly unfolded on the floor of the atrium as I carefully unpacked and laid out the components on the floor.

To go with the total suspension component refit I went for the Ohlins R+T coilover struts which are adjustable for both road and track while not being overly harshly sprung or dampened for touring the backroads of England and Europe. Those duly arrived in more boxes and were unpacked and added to the rapidly expanding aluminium bone yard in the centre of the house.

The Ohlins arrived well and truly disassembled and a full evening was spent on the floor with iPad in hand assembling the components into the strut assemblies. At least the actual damper itself was built. The view from the upstairs balcony started to resemble a 1:1 scale model kit of a 911 ready for assembly. The cat, displaced from its daytime napping mat, retired to the living room aggrieved. The rest of the family are pretty used to finding and stepping over chunks of freshly unwrapped aluminium belonging to some vehicle or another. (the days of this kind of capper are numbered as the garage is about to be refitted with two metre high and eight metres long worth of storage to accommodate the burgeoning collection of tools and parts).

The task now is to find someone who is willing to fit nearly an entire undercarriage of a 911 or the task will fall to me once I have studied the multitude of YouTube videos on the subject. Should I be forced to do it myself it will be imperative that it is properly set up as it would be a complete waste to spend a small fortune on beautifully crafter parts to the crab around a racetrack adrenalising the copilot wantonly. I am sure next months episode with bw filled with tales of angle grinders and lump hammers as I attempt to chisel off 140k mile only original componentry.