ae92 shocks

[Mux213]

Alimonos,

I never had any AE92 bilsteins in my hands so no idea. Have you taken a look at my project thread and seen what I did for the tokico's?

Forget about your lowering and RCAs. Only think that is important is the length of the body your bilstein shocks. They will be shorter then the AE86 ones and if you just put them in your struts, they will be able to move and you do not want that.

Ergo, you need to shorten your struts. The amount you need to shorten them depends on the difference in lenght between the AE86 standard shock, and that of the bilstein shocks. Most likely this difference is around 6cm.

Shortening your strut 6cm is not a good idea however which is what all these guys are trying to explain If you cut 6cm underneath the perch on your strut (the thing the spring rests on) the result will be an additional lowering of your car by 6cm, you don't want that.

You can limit the amount of cutting needed by adding spacers underneath the shock. But this spacer should not be to heigh or it will make your shock work in a less effective range. I don't know what height is best for bilstein, I would just go with a 2cm spacer so you only need to cut 4cm off your strut.

Then if you use coilovers, you just remove the perch and cut 4cm anywhere but from the top (see my thread) because the coilovers allow you to finetune the ride height.

If you do not use coilovers you need to take a GOOOD look at your current ride height. If you are happy with your current ride height (so the lowering your springs already provide you), you should cut the 4cm ABOVE the perch, but make sure that you keep the top part of the strut in tact and weld it on because it contains the metric the top nut screws into.

If you want a lower ride you deside how much lower you want your car. If you want to lower your car by another 1cm you cut 1cm out of your strut BELOW the perch and 3cm out of your strut ABOVE the perch and weld it all together (yes that means cutting 4x and welding 2x!!).
The problem offcourse is that you wont know your exact ride height until you put everything together and you might find out you wanted 1.5cm lowering, and you can't... I really would get a coilover sleeve!

Else it's all a question of measuring what you want, and a little bit of gambling.

I'm busy doing a writeup of this based on my experience with my car. Hope to have it online soon..