Looks like the silver things are upper spring perches, with some kind of adapter to work with the stock rubber bushings. It also looks like the silver things also act as the upper bump stop. However, it does look like the spring load acts thru the bushings...

Don, if you invert Bilstein *struts*, the unsprung wt is worse- the struts are already inverted. This is why the Bilsteins have what appears to be a massive piston rod (connecting to the upper spring perch) compared to the stock one(and others like the Konis). That "rod" is actually a housing (with oil and floating piston) that the inverted piston runs within. Bilstein inverted the struts so the heaviest section of the shock would become *sprung wt* (opposite of stock). The lighter piston then becomes *unsprung wt*, resulting in a decrease in unsprung wt over stock/hydralic shock (e.g. Konis).

If you were to invert the Bilstein struts again, the heavy body section would become *unsprung wt* (like stock). This would result in an increased unsprung wt when compared to the normal operating position of a Bilstein strut.

In the case of the pictures linked by John Le (Lilbucu), those are for a double wishbone suspension- not a strut. In those cases that use a tube type shock, Bilstein does not supply them inverted. But if you did invert them, you would be reducing the unsprung wt (which is good). Since I have already written too much, I won't go into the reasons why Bilstein does not invert the tube type strut.

By John Le (Lilbucu) (128.208.36.70) on Thursday, January 06, 2005 - 03:25 pm:

what are those silver caps that sits over the spring? i don't have those. my springs jsut go up into where the stock spring goes.

By Kurt (205.250.75.226) on Thursday, January 06, 2005 - 03:07 pm:

pretty

By Ted (63.224.195.169) on Thursday, January 06, 2005 - 02:35 pm:

Let's try that again

By Ted (63.224.195.169) on Thursday, January 06, 2005 - 02:28 pm:

Here is my set-up. Close to being off-the shelf as you can get. Not the best, but they work, sort-of:

75 threaded strut cases
Koni (classicgarage)wet inserts set to max stiff
10 weight shock oil (will be putting 20 weight in for next season)
Ground Control coil-overs with Eibach 7" 350 lb springs up front and 7" 250 lb springs rear.
Spring perches cut and platform welded on. Rear purch was lowered another 2" after photo was taken to provide additional lowering and adjustment.

I'm not completely happy with this set-up as my spring rates are too stiff for the shocks. These rates do help keep my car level through the turns however. Should the heavier weight oil not help with the "bouncing" or "rocking" I'm still experiencing, I will likely get the Koni valves rebuild for stiffer adjustment. I screwed up one run last year because of my suspensions bouncing, which caused a rear wheel to lock up during braking causing a full 180 spin-out.

By Don (199.2.139.216) on Thursday, January 06, 2005 - 06:15 am:

I think there is hi pressure and low pressure designs. The bilsteins have threads in either end it would solve a bunch of fitment problems. BUTT the rod is still 11mm with 8 mm threads I dont like that part I would have never bought them if I had know that too wimpy for my taste it would be different if the car had a upper control arm

I will most likely build a set of konis to get though this season allready have the 75 wet Strut housings at the rear with a set of NOS Carrera insets.. Chopped 2 1/4"

By Colza (Colza) (210.54.193.172) on Thursday, January 06, 2005 - 02:23 am:

Im not sure im following the last few posts entirely correctly, but if i turn my gas struts upside down they make some awful burbling noises when you compress and extend the shaft....

What sort of gas struts can be mounted that way up?

By John Le (Lilbucu) (24.19.196.31) on Thursday, January 06, 2005 - 01:41 am:

Don, the idea i had, had the strut upside down, but the spring still at the top of the car, with a spacer for the spring to the control arm. this spacer would be more narrow than the spring to provide more room for tire clearence.

are are some pics of a new honda style upside down shocks: http://www.shockwarehouse.com/images/jg_shocks.jpg

http://www.speedoptions.com/articles/4836/pic01.jpg

By Kyle Thomson (24.83.12.187) on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 - 08:05 pm:

allright nevermind, just use your imagination, its not even letting me get to the part where I browse for the file, but it posts anyways? wierd

By Kyle Thomson (24.83.12.187) on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 - 08:03 pm:

bugger, it froze before I could upload the pic

By Don (199.2.139.220) on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 - 07:58 pm:

Actually Unsprung weight would be better, thats why they mount them that way. Springs could be a problem. My bearing is 5/8. Advanced designs makes allot of struts for people that race NASA. I wouldnt say I "Know" someone but I have talked to a few happy customers.

By Kyle Thomson (24.83.12.187) on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 - 07:57 pm:

Not sure if this is relevant or not, I don't know half of what you guys are talking about in the last few posts, but this is what I did. I know its not up to the race quality your looking for, but I think it made it easier than the cutting technique you were using to shorten the strut casings. I had a machinest actually cut more threads down the inside of the casing, then modify the cap so that it could screw internally into the casing. Then all I had to do was cut down the extra casing until the cap was even with the top again. This also helped me because of the fact that the corners of the cap were mashing up the upper spring perch before I had them shortened, it actually gained me and extra half inch of travel because it fits up inside it now when I bottom out =)
here's a pic (man I wish I knew how to size them down)

sorry about the size

By John (67.180.167.118) on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 - 07:00 pm:

Don, do you personally know anyone that has run the Advanced Design struts? I guess I tend to be a bit skeptical until I have additional feedback. I've also had first hand experience with custom dampers that fell far short of their claims.

You could mount the Bilstein upside down, but remember the struts are inverted already (hence the oil issue). It would still work, but unsprung weight would suffer. Mounting would be a pain, tire to strut clearance would suffer, and in my application there would be a problem with center hole clearance.

By Don (199.2.139.182) on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 - 05:55 pm:

Oh You just gave me an idea I can mount these up side down as they are gas struts. I just have to figure out how to mount a spring on them

By shnitzel (24.66.81.139) on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 - 05:47 pm:

for those of you whom are like myself, cut and hack is always a great option! ha ha ha!

what about cutting the tops of the strut towers off and raising them? i was going to do this on a renault a long time ago but abandoned the project when i moved. might be ugly, but effective. even put scoops in the hood over the towers! ha ha ha

By Don (199.2.139.227) on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 - 05:19 pm:

I cant shorten them enough using a two piece housing setup. The 1.5 will work and so will the struts, I'm just picky. If a custom strut housing was made very thin it would work. This is what I'm looking at. I may do it I am just spoiled by the ability to knock out 2"+ out of the wet setup that I did for Lazy. The custom stut housings and bilsteins will cost 700 per pair for another 100 I could have custom made double adjustables made to my specs.... See the ground control website.

By John Le (Lilbucu) (128.208.36.42) on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 - 03:42 pm:

don, i don't know how much money you plan on speding on your suspension, but my first option was to go for some custom konis, but they were out of my price range. if you are interested you should look up a guy named Lee Grimes (crx lee on honda-tech.com). he is like the head koni motorsports guy. i was very close to sending him my stock struts for him to make make me a totally custom set that would be shorter than stock and valved for ~400lb springs. but like is said, the cost was out of my budget.

another option would just to check out the koni motor sport cataloge to see what off the shelf options you can use. http://www.koni-na.com/pdfcatalogs/KONIMotosportCatalog.pdf

check out page 12.

another option i almost went with is just to mount the strut upside down. this would require maybe just the same ammount of work, and would solve the problem of having to find something to fit inside the 42mm strut bore.

Don, can i ask what was wrong with the measurement that blisein gave you? looks like those things would work fine. or maybe you are saying that with those struts, "only" 1.5in shorter than stock is not good enough? what is the length of the body (not including the spacer rod on the bottem?)

By Don (199.2.139.239) on Wednesday, January 05, 2005 - 05:49 am:

I dont know like I said the smaller ones are not good because the small amout of oil gets hot too quick. I got the info from Bilstein themselves.

By John (67.180.167.118) on Tuesday, January 04, 2005 - 11:11 pm:

Don,

What are the dimensions of the smaller Bilstein? Are you certain of the dimensions? Or are the measurements from the same source that supplied you with the ones you are trying to unload now?

By Don (199.2.139.169) on Tuesday, January 04, 2005 - 07:41 pm:

http://autoracer.net/sale.html
This is what I think of VW struts for Hondas
They will work, these are the shortest strut made by bilstein much shorter than stock VW inserts.
Even with the shortest strut avalible it is only 1.5 inches shorter than stock. I'm going to pursue other options ...... the parts to put two front casings together included to any Civic guy, but the VW racers will probably end up with these.
Bilstein makes a smaller diameter strut that may fit the stock honda case but they tend to fade because of lack of oil volume per bilstein.

By Colza (Colza) (219.88.29.185) on Sunday, January 02, 2005 - 01:00 am:

From my experience with VW strut casings:

Rear strut plus tacked on civic bottom = stock length

Front strut with machined knuckle to slot the wider casing in = stock length\

As my daily driver is nearly back on the road i will be finishing off my strut conversion very soon. AND i got a digital camera for christmas so pics galore!

Those struts are looking very nice, i hope they work out for you

By John Le (Lilbucu) (24.19.196.31) on Saturday, January 01, 2005 - 10:37 pm:

the front struts are shorter than the stock pieces! and the rears are the same length (if not shorter). they are definately NOT longer than the stock pieces, that would defeat the whole purpose of using the VW inserts. see how the front struts are tapered at the bottem? the insert acually goes into that part too!! in other words its just not the stock bottems of the old civic strut cut off and welded on to the bottem of the vw casing. that is a completly custom piece.


if anything i will have more travel than stock.

by the way, these pictures are with the perch lowered about half way, way too low!!! i was just messing around to see what it looks like. i'm sure i could run this hight for racing, but too low for street driving.

i'm running 350/400lb springs, so i won't need too much travel anyways.

sorry no pics of the welds, but i assure you they are plenty strong, but may not be the prettiest.

the flares are just taped on for now, for testing purposes. i will cut the fender in vetical lines and bend them outward and have them holding the flares that way some how.

By lazy (165.228.57.19) on Saturday, January 01, 2005 - 03:46 am:

yeah, don't worry - I'll be going photo crazy

By Don (199.2.139.229) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 08:31 pm:

Weres the edit button ... Randy I ment not rodger

By Don (199.2.139.229) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 08:29 pm:

I tried to find the picture of the shortened rear casings and inserts but lazy will have to post those too

By Don (199.2.139.229) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 08:26 pm:

I run 350 200 rate and will run stiffer next year and the suspension moves abot 2.5" durring a run any streetable suspension will move!


This is a picture of the shortened 75 casings and koni inserts next to a stock length 73-74 insert.
These are the best most painless way to go.... But now they belong to Lazy The rear inserts are NLA
Rodger you can steel this picture I forgot to take more before it was all packed, but im sure lazy will have some sow off pic's once the springs are on.

I'm in the proccess of doing another strut conversion not using openable civic housings ...what a pain in my a$$ to do it right.

By farenheight101 (70.68.162.8) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 08:01 pm:

oh...then you won't need the bump stops too.

By farenheight101 (70.68.162.8) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 07:59 pm:

yea but if you had stiffer springs then it wouldn't matter because they wouldn't travel that low.

By John S. (67.65.59.215) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 05:48 pm:

There just aren't any shortcuts with the strut assemblies, are there Don...time and money.

By Don (199.2.139.211) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 06:49 am:

I think the fender flares look great but the casings are wrong, they look longer than stock from the pictures. You need shorter not longer otherwise you run out of travel when the car is lowered

By John S. (66.136.147.123) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 02:16 am:

That is lookin Rad...
Just out of curiousity, I assume you had to trim the flares to fit...how are you attaching them to the body?

By Chaffneue (Chaffneue) (66.183.190.188) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 01:48 am:

hmm.. could you post a close up of those welds? they are better than the pictures make them look right? Otherwise very trick looking..

-Richard

By malcon pierce (Project79) (68.63.17.76) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 01:12 am:

i like

By John Le (Lilbucu) (24.16.243.28) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 12:56 am:

oh yeah, and those are VW rabbit fender flares!!! they fit very good!

13x7 panasports in 4x100.

By John Le (Lilbucu) (24.16.243.28) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 12:54 am:

sorry, i don't know how to use this picture upload thing very well.

those are VW rabbit koni yellow adjustable inserts in custom casings me and my buddy made.

what do you guys think?

By John Le (Lilbucu) (24.16.243.28) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 12:53 am:

C:\Documents and Settings\John\Desktop\New Folder DSC02099.JPG

By John Le (Lilbucu) (24.16.243.28) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 12:52 am:

C:\Documents and Settings\John\Desktop\New Folder DSC02099.JPG

By John Le (Lilbucu) (24.16.243.28) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 12:52 am:

C:\Documents and Settings\John\Desktop\New Folder DSC02099.JPG

By John Le (Lilbucu) (24.16.243.28) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 12:46 am:

C:\Documents and Settings\John\Desktop\New Folder
DSC02099.JPG