DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

No, looking really grotty



This all surprised me a bit as in my mind I only refreshed the suspension a couple of year ago. Turns out it was about 7 years ago

Still, the last time I put things together I used plenty of alu-slip so most of it came apart OK


I found the impact gun was brilliant for getting the ball joint nut off (with the right tool of course). Getting the ball joint itself out was another matter - I ended up splitting the rubber getting them off so new ones were ordered.

I toyed with ordering de-cambered ball joints but after an email to centre Gravity decided against it - he said on my last visit they didn’t max out the camber and it was nicely balanced so there didn’t seem much point. Standard it is then.


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After a while and a bit of a fight from the cotter pins I ended up with this



Removing the shock absorbers from the housing was a challenge - eventually I cut the threaded part off a left-over acro prop and used that to thread it out - worked a charm



After a bit more dismantling I ended up with this to-do list




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Inspecting one of the struts I found a small hole


Not good! Obviously I could weld it up but I realised that the weld would go inside and possibly interfere with the fitting of the shock absorber

I therefore welded a tab over it


And after a fair bit of hammering, welding and planishing ended up with this




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By now I was committed to a full front suspension restoration

I’ve got elephant racing through-body front anti-roll bar fitted. This hadn’t faired well

The drop-links were knackered so new ones were ordered



You’ll notice the new version now has rubber boots around the joint….

And there’s an alloy collar that stops the ARB sliding from side to side - that’s held on with a pinch bolt. Or at least it was



I did contact elephant to see if I could just order the collar but I didn’t hear back from them. I didn’t push it because I found something very similar online made from stainless steel.



It doesn’t come in pink - this was engineers ink while I tried to mark out how much to shave off it (it was about 2mm too thick).

I clamped it onto a bar to do the machining



Overall it went well, although I ended up filing off a bit of the holding bolts so they didn’t catch on the plate behind them when fitted up


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Just the front suspension I hear you say?

Well after a while I thought it would be rude to take the shocks out and not do anything with them so I thought I’d send them off to bilstein for a rebuild.

It would be daft to just send the fronts wouldn’t it?

So out came the rears….



I phoned Bilstein up and they said to bring them down (they are only in Leicester) so I drove down.

It was a big place and entered via a warehouse door. A polish guy asked if he could help and I said I’d brought my shocks to be rebuilt. He took the bag off me, plonked them on a shelf and started to walk off.

Bearing in mind we were in a warehouse the size of the one in Indiana Jones where they stored the ark of the covenant, my panic started to rise

“Woah, woah!” I said “I want speak to someone about them first. “OK’ he says “I go get manager”

Now I’m contemplating just walking out as my confidence is at rock bottom.

Then this guy comes out. I said I’ve bought the shocks in for rebuilding - he took them off me and said “Hmm, I can see you’re running your 911 lower than stock - that might be causing problems with the internal bump stop”

“How did you know they’re off a 911?” I asked. “It’s my job to know” he said. He really knew his stuff and my confidence was fully restored. I asked him to make the fronts a little softer. He said he would do that and also look at the internal bump stop to see if it was worth cutting it down.

He said it would be about 10 days. It’s actually been 4 weeks but he phoned me today to say they are ready for collection. He said they were really knackered - one of the fronts wasn’t doing any absorbing at all and it would just have hit the bump stop. And the rears were pretty knackered too. He said they were set to be quite hard too so he’s softened them to normal and said they are good as new now.

I’m going to collect them on Monday

Happy days

That’s enough for now - I’ll do some more updates over the next few days


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Great stuff, good to see you getting stuck in again.


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All interesting stuff Mark. Let us know how the car rides with rebuilt and revalved shocks

Great to get an update Mark, and I love the GT4 plate

Mark, obviously your shocks are modified for the coil overs so worth getting them rebuilt, but I’d be curious to know what the cost was vs buying new shocks


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Good to see this great thread revived ! - thanks for the updates Mark.

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sladey wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 9:10 pm “Woah, woah!” I said “I want speak to someone about them first. “OK’ he says “I go get manager”

This is a nice story - would you be able to tell us roughly how much they charged ?

From memory it’s around £90 a shock for the rebuild service.

I’ll be able to confirm the amount when I collect them

Hi Mark
Glad you’re back writing…always an enjoyable read…
Jp

Cheers matey. There’s a fair bit more to come.

I had a lightbulb moment a couple of weeks ago after reading a post by Winston. He said he parks his classic out front in the summer months so he has to use it.

Since I got the alpine and then the gt4 I’ve stopped using the old car apart from road trips and I feel something is missing from my life. Don’t get me wrong I feel very lucky to drive both those cars and they were/are amazing.

My barn is great but it’s not wide enough for 2 cars side by side - so whichever car is nearest the door is the one you use.

Therefore once the hot rod is back on the road I’m going to go back to driving it every day - at least until September/October. And the aim is to do that each year.

I’m excited about it as I feel the old car suits me and my personality more than the new ones.

Doesn't seem that long ago you did all this Mark, but time does fly, I think it's over 10 years that I rebuilt my suspension and I think you did yours before I did mine.

Those A arms are well crusty, please tell me you're going to replace those and not weld them up?