We are back with the second phase of parts for Brian’s suspension overhaul!
As a refresher, in the last post Brian’s car was shown at its new ride height, sitting on Rebel Devil Customs’ Devil Drops. This sorted the altitude problem but the suspension installs weren’t over yet. Going beyond just lowering the car, Brian also wanted to stiffen it up a touch more and address some of the byproducts of lowering it so severely. Up front a set of Massive adjustable sway bar endlinks were fitted to allow the sway bar to be reset to the proper position, while out back some adjustable camber arms (also from Massive) would help with the alignment. The final piece was a rear strut bar from Kyle Deyoung (owner of ST4 #004), a piece that myself and many other Mk3 sedan owners have picked up and been very happy with.
Brian came by the MacKenCo garage once again to fit the new components and while we didn’t take a ton of photos of the process, we did make sure to at least show this comparison of the rear camber arms because it was quite shocking. Worth noting is that Brian opted for black on both his endlinks and camber arms, to keep them subtle.
On the left in both photos is Massive’s offering which is, well, massive! Shown in the middle is an OEM ST rear camber arm (from Ketchup) while the one on the right is Brian’s original unit (non-ST). You can clearly see how much of a step-up in size the new arm is as compared to either OEM unit, but it was also surprising to learn that STs and non-STs have different components. The ST arms are set aside for Mustard now, incidentally.
The Massive camber arms weren’t too tricky to install but reaching the upper bolts can be a bit of a challenge. Regardless, the old arms were out before too long and once the new arms were set to the OEM length they were tossed in; they were set to that because we knew roughly how much rear camber would result and that it’d be safe for getting the car off to the alignment rack.
As further proof of how large the new units are, note how they’re slightly cut out for clearance around the rear shocks! The indents also serve as a great visual identifier for knowing which arm is which.
As Brian was finishing up the second camber arm I then got to work trimming the trunk liners for the Kyle Deyoung strut bar. Being a strut bar these naturally tie-in to the rear strut towers, securing to longer bolts that replace the OEM upper strut hardware. To make it pop without going too crazy, Brian’s bar was finished in Midnight Metallic powdercoat, a super-dark finish that shows off some blue when the light hits it.
With the Titanium’s suspension modifications now fully sorted (at least 2017’s changes…) the final step was to get everything aligned so that meant a trip down to Balance! After the car had a bit of time to fully settle, I met up with Brian at the shop and while the guys got his wheels pointing straight we took the chance to hang out, check out the shop ITR, and happily managed to bump into Dustin when he came by in his 350Z. Please click play above to check all of that out if you haven’t yet!
I know Brian was super happy to have the suspension dealt with on the Titanium now, finishing off what was a very productive year for the sedan! He now has an extremely solid foundation to keep building off of and you can be sure that he will do so. There are still more plans for this one, so you’ll see more of it here as they come to fruition!
-Bill
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