Ground control suspension set up for celica gt4

[senior fred]

Hi Guys,
I have been looking at suspension upgrades for my ' 88 Celica GT4 and I have looked at well detailed article on Alltrac.net where they have taken the standard suspension strut and with a little bit of modification (cut & welding) fitted Ground Control coil over sleeve kits and fitted Eibach Springs and Koni Yellow adjustable shock inserts. The kits have the backing of Eibach . The kits for the Celica cost $399.00 (USD) and if you want the adjustable ball tops another $290.00 The kits are all USA made no Taiwan bits. You nominate or tell them what shocks you are going to use and they set up the kits to suit. You advise them of what you intend to use the car for and they will advise you on the selection of spring rate to go with.

Sounds good but the deciding factor is the cost of purchasing Koni Yellow adjustable shock inserts. If I import the shocks from Ground Control or any other US supplier, while the price may look good, I have to add the cost to freight them here.

My other alternative is find a supplier here in Australia who can supply the Koni yellow inserts for my Celica and what they are likely to charge me.

So can you help me,do you know of any Koni dealers who can supply these inserts and at a good price? What I need is 4 front only Koni Yellow shock absorber inserts for a ST165, ST162 or ST185.

Yes I know the rear struts are non serviceable, that's where the bit of modification comes in. You cut off the top of the rear strut and weld on the theaded section from a used front strut, install the new inserts and screw down the threaded cap.

Not bad heh? Adjustable height suspension, Eibach springs, and Koni Yellow adjustable shocks at hopefully the price of the lower end of the market coilovers..

Cheers

[senior fred]

Hey I forgot to say, the sleeve kits do not come with shock absorbers. The kit includes the adjustable height sleeves (F&R) & locking rings, Eibach spings, perch tops and rings.
Shocks and adjustable camber tops are extra. Yes you can use KYB or Bilstien inserts instead of Koni's

[Ken_T]

Ask yourself, are stock replacement shocks what you really want? By lowering the car where will the piston be at static height in relation to the range of stroke? If you are going to lower the car a lot, you should get "short stroke" dampers.

Contact gslrallysport for Koni shocks. I asked him for 8611-1259's and he told me there was none in the country but he looked further and found a pair for me. Great service. I dunno if he's a member here but if not I'll go grab his details off another site that he's a sponsor on.

One last thing, maybe I'm getting confused but I think otomoto sell the weld on sleeves for 300aud.

[jonathan yee]

so are you talking something like this? these are mine from about 5yr's ago. modded st162 struts with threaded sleeves, koni shocks, king pro springs. all up about 2k. free labour(welding)

the shocks alone cost about 1k.

[jonathan yee]

for my st165 i'm going to just see if i can fit st185 uprights at the front, then i can just use any st185 coilovers (BC if i'm feeling cheap, TEIN if i can somehow score some old stock/2nd hand import)

[senior fred]

Ken_T The points you made are good mate. From what you are saying is if you take the standard strut then gut it out, chuck away the original spring and damper, but leave the bottom perch attached. Then slide over the threaded sleeve, add the Eibach spring and put the new top perch back on. Now ride height or the uncompressed spring will be heigher or longer.

To get the ride height lower than standard or to evaluate out the increase in distance contributed by the adjustable nuts (spring seats) even in there lowest setting the new Eicbach spring are going to have to be shorter. If you look at the diameter of any spring used on coilovers, they are a lot tighter than the standard toyota spring.

The Koni Yellow shocks I am looking at using, are not a standard shock. They are a high performance unit with 31 adjustments for compression and rebound.

You can look at this set up by going to Ground Control on the net. of find them at Facebook.


I note some previous members have used these kits in their rides a Celica GT4 and a Supra.

You can buy on ebay coilover sleeve kits for less than $100.00, but you don't know what the quality is like. Ground Control have been around for a long time and they use good quality springs. Eibach are one of the worlds top spring makers.

What attracts me is the spring shock combo, but I need to be able to buy the Koni Yellow shocks for around or less than $600.00. Surely buying the Koni's in Australia must be cheaper than importing them from America. I mean freight cost and duties from Europe to America and then to Australia vera Europe to Australia direct.

I appreciate your comments guys regardless for or against.

Hey Jonathan my son Jarrad says G'day.

Cheers

[Ken_T]

Firstly, HSD sleeve kit.
HSD 51mm sleeve kit otomoto.shop033.com
Comes with 6k spring but will supply whatever although, I have no idea where the springs come from, in which case the eibach springs might be the better deal. The sleeves are steel, I had some before but decided to sell it for some reason. They're in from Australia too.

Second, you misunderstood what I wrote or I'm not good at explaining stuff (<-usually the case) so I drew a pretty picture.

Now, are the koni's you want standard length or shorter to suit lower cars. People say that running a shock near the end of it's stroke isn't good for it especially for koni's since the cool stuff doing the work on a twin-tube shock is at the bottom and you risk hitting this stuff with the piston if the car is too low.

You will probably need to shorten the casing too. I noticed this the other day when I was screwing around on my car where when the strut with the wheel off was raised to ride height, the top of the damper casing was within 5mm of the bumpstop and I'm guessing the damper piston is near the end of it's stroke.

Oh BTW, the picture I drew shows the damper piston sitting about middle of stroke when at standard height and near the bottom end of the stroke when lowered. Common practice on AE86's is to buy "short stroke" shocks. Essentially shocks that are shorter which will place the piston around the centre of the stroke when the car is lowered so you still have ~3 inches of travel in jounce in ~2" in rebound. The norm is(was?) to put ST185 AGX dampers into shortened strut casings.

[ShutoMax]

Aren't there ready made coil overs from tien/bc etc??

[Ken_T]

The damping curves on them are probably inferior to one produced by a koni. I don't think I've even seen a dyno chart for either of those brands. There's like two affordable dampers worth getting for a car and the effort that needs to go into putting them into the car is worth the hassle over off the shelf units coilovers.

The only problem for getting konis is not knowing what "spring rate" the standard replacement dampers are valved for. Sure, they're adjustable but only on rebound which sorta limits your useable range of spring rates.

[styler]

I'd have to say building coilovers is probably one of the most frustrating exercises I have had to deal with,
anyone can slap together a set of diy but to get it right is an absolute bitch with comp/rebound, weight/droop,
camber tops, spring rates/block heights, gland nuts/spacers, insert damping curves and rates, captive springs etc.
I'd advise to triple check the setup and be prepared to have to do or or two things twice that's all!

[styler]

Just for reference the new base adjustable coil over designs have many advantages compared to weld on conventional designs, not sure if theres something
to suit your application but it allows full stroke of the damper and captive spring retention regardless of height adjustment.

[Bazda]

We do coilover kits and we custom valve them and supply the shock dynos.

In our own brand: http://www.toymods.org.au/forums/mrp...ae86-more.html

Fortune Auto - These use super digressive valving and will ride like Bilstein/KW/Penske. I'm running these on my race car and even on super stiff spring rates it soaks up bumps on the street well!! very very good shocks and def ride like the above brands stated.
http://www.toymods.org.au/forums/mrp...echnology.html
http://www.toymods.org.au/forums/mrp...series-g2.html

[senior fred]

I am interested Bazda. Tell me more and price?

[jonathan yee]

yes the set i did was my one and only. i wouldn't do it again. you don't have the proper ability to adjust ride height without changing preload on the springs, really you need to just fit longer or shorter "capture springs".

proper coilovers have adjustment on the strut mount so you can adjust ride height without affecting suspension travel etc.

the only issue, as always is that no-one makes them for the st165. correct me if i'm wrong, but i think the st185 rears fit, but it's the strut-hub bolt spacing that is different? hence why i'm going to try and fit st185 hub/uprights.

not to offend but my memory sucks.....which jarrad?........

[ShutoMax]

^some one here has done that i was just looking