S13 Rear Coilovers in my 280zx

[BluDestiny]

Ok so Since i've gotten my new rims/tires, my car has rubbed like crazy up and down driveways and on bumps in the freeway and even on initial acceleration. This is because I should have gotten 1inch more offset on my rims, but what can you do. This annoyed me becasue I thought my suspension was pretty stiff, but I was way wrong.

 

I was running tokico HP struts and tokico springs in the rear.

 

I recently got a pair of Kei Office coilovers(Keiichi Tsuchiya's old brand) from someone on Zilvia for $300 which is pretty good since they aren't blown. From what I've read the spingrates in the rear is about 7kg/mm. The good thing about these coilovers is that the strut is fully threaded same as megan and stance coilovers. Only downside is that kei office went under and no one can rebuild them.

 

When I first put the Hp's and the coilovers side by side I was a little worried, because the HP struts are about 3 inches longer than the coilovers with the top hats.

After I adjusted the coilovers though it came out to about the same hieght.

 

Anyway I forgot to snap pictures of the coilover off the car, and I don't want to take these off.

 

The bottom of the coilover fits perfectly onto the original knuckle thingy.

 

The tophat however only has 2 bolts and is 3ish inches in diameter, so instead of drilling holes into my stut tower, I got a 5x3 cylindrical piece of aluminum and brought the 280zx top hat and s13 top hat to a machine shop. Top hat installed:

 

Here is a pic of the spare aluminum leftover.

 

I had them design basically a 5in s13 top hat with the same bolt pattern as the 280zx tophat. I can now use any set of s13 rear coilovers. The top hats cost me about $200 for both plus I paid for the piece of aluminium which was about $30. not bad. Total price of rear coilover for my car was $530. The rear is pretty stiff and drove it on the freeway for 3 hours without any issues.

 

I do not have coilovers in the front yet, but I haven't had a problem with the Illuminas rubbing in the front. I am debating on if I want to get some weld in ground controls with camber plates or just wait and save up for some stances.

 

Note: You would have to be retarded to mess this up. Getting the top hats was an easy way for me to make them a bolt in affair without drilling holes plus I can still run my Cusco rear strut bar without drilling holes in it as well. I don't care if you say it's easier to drill holes, this is how I did it.

[bluezx]

I'm using the same Kei Office coil-overs in the rear of my 82zx. They're very stiff and greatly improved my car's launch and cornering abilities. I got a good deal on just the rear set from a local jdm importer because one was damaged. Was told they came out of a wrecked skyline. Working at a machine shop at the time I was able to fix the damaged one and modify the 2-bolt top plates.

 

I turned down the dia. of the top plate and redrilled for the 280zx 3-bolt pattern. Pressed in 3 studs and after adjusting them most of the way down they dropped right in. The Skylines adjusted length was to tall for my car but they still allow enough adjustment to lower my car as low as I want.

 

The only downside I see to using these is the lack of readily avalible rebuild inserts you mentioned. If they ever need to be rebuilt I'll throw some stock ones in and try to find a source for new inserts. Please post if you find a source for these parts.

 

They can be fully dissasembled with the correct wrench. I made one that looks like an angle grinder 2-pin type spanner to take them all the way apart. They are very well made and I'm sure the basic insert needed to freshen them up can be found somewere on the web.

 

I got the Ground Controls+camber plates from Gabe a while back but haven't got them in yet to give an impression of how they work with the Kei Office rears.

 

Nice job on you're install.

Mark.