Project 510 – Coilovers

Finally the Datto gets some serious upgrades. Enough of the polishing, painting and little fiddly bits, its time for the good gear.

Troy Ermish Racing (USA) rear coilovers & Datsport (AUS) adjustable rear crossmember DIY kit.

The rear crossmembers can either be bought as a complete unit (subject to a change-over policy), or you can buy the parts separate and weld them on yourself. I chose the DIY kit because my crossmember already had an enlarged hole for my 3″ exhaust, plus I got a good price to weld it all together so it worked out cheaper.

The rear coilovers bolt into where the shock absorbers used to be, therefore the rear end is no longer a separate shock/spring setup.

The adjustable tabs are welded on to the crosemember where the lower A arms attach to allow for camber/caster adjustment. Being a 40 year old Independent Rear Suspension design, these cars get heaps of negative camber when you lower them. This kit allows you to control that.

On to the front end…

Koni Yellow Damper Adjustable front shock absorbers (Z31), T3 weld-on ground control coilover kit, T3 camber tops, and Nissan America 1″ bump steer spacers (lucky find).

The struts were shortened 50mm to suit the shorter shocks. Here is one assembled strut.

Before I put them in the car, I wanted to try out a little experiment to see if I could suppress a bit of the noise that coilovers are notorious for. I looked around for something circular that I could wrap around the top and bottom coils. I ended up finding what I was looking for right infront of me, the rubber dust boots from my old shocks.

I cut off a ring like so…

And then wrapped it around the top and bottom coil…

Hopefull this softens a bit of the metal-on-metal contact. (Also you can see that I cut the bump-stops in the above picture)

One more bit of work before the struts were re-installed. I painted the inner guards with some Chassis Black chip-resistant paint.

Before:

After:

Bump-steer spacers:

Camber tops:

So now’s the part where I show you pictures of the car sitton on its guts? Well sorry but you’re going to have to wait just a little bit longer, the next update will definitely show the car slammed, along with one other visual modification, here’s a hint…

🙂