SIA for the atrocious picture quality, it was down to my phone or nothing.




Reds are shorter both in the shaft and the body--1.5-2 inches in the body and 1-1.5 inches in the shaft. You'll notice a good amount of bare metal on the red where I had to grind quite a bit of material off in order to get it to fit into the 4th gen strut housings. Then, big 2x4 and many well-placed sledge blows made it fit nice and snug.

That was the easy part. The hard part is wrestling with the springs compressors. Keep in mind the reds ARE shorter, and if you want to use 'em you're going to have to compress your springs quite a bit more in order to get the upper strut mount to reach the top of the strut rod. In order to do this we had to grab four coils with the spring compressor and crank it down.

That was all well and good, until we had to remove the spring compressor. Of course, the compressors got stuck in between the coils since they were at the topmost and bottommost coils and the spring was under more load. Quite a bit of trouble to get 'em to fit, but they ride nicely and you can immediately notice the extra compression travel.

Now just to get some SFCs so they really DO ride nicely...

 

Only drawback to the 3 gen reds is that they're only rebound adjustable and they are only adjustable off the car. you can always have them modified to be externally adjustable, but at that price you could just about buy a set of Advance Design or a GOOD coilover setup.

 

They're also a bit softer than 4th gen yellows and top out more easily. Yellows for the 4th gen are also only rebound adjustable, but you can adjust the fronts while they're on the car.

 

Wow. That's a big difference in extended length.

 

Yeah, so much that I had to disassemble the spring compressor in order to remove it...

Good times.

 

That's why you get two sets of compressors. use one to get them on the strut, then another on the innermost coils to remove the first set from the springs.

Man I'd really like some stiffer shocks for my 3 gen.. running the Koni reds now... almost willing to pay for custom valving at this point, but I'm going to investigate some stuff on my S14 that looks like I could modify it to fit.

 

Finally!

So you installed it all the way in till the threaded part bottomed out? It looks like its the same length as my shortned 4th gen yellow that way, or close to it. Can you measure the body top to bottom, ie from where the bump stop *would* hit to the bottom of the housing. Suspension travel is the shiznit.

 

The yellows are definitely more firmly valved than the reds. For awhile I had a red on the front passenger side with worn-out (think 100k+ miles) yellows on all other three corners. Whenever I hit a bump big enough to send the suspension into oscillation, the peaks and valleys of the red would be 1-2" more extension/compression than the yellows. That didn't exactly make for predictable behavior, but hey, I needed transportation.

If you shortened the yellows you could fit them in a third gen housing as all the diameters and thread pitches match up, although you'd be sacrificing maybe 1/2" of raw compression travel. FWIW, you'd have plenty more extension though...

External adjustability is also nice... I've also noticed that the reds aren't gas charged as they don't automatically extend like the yellows.

They're in the housings now, and they ain't coming out without some serious metal-mangling vice grip action. They come a bit shorter (maybe 1cm) than you could get the yellows by lopping off the extra threaded tubing. I didn't shorten them as I was already afraid of topping out over sharp crests.

If you like, I can take a measurement from the highest portion of the lower spring perch to the top of the insert body... (yes, I did install 'em fully jammed into the housings)

 

Why the fear about topping out? I have a hard time imagining it'd be that bad...

 

Yea measure the completed body please. I will measure mine as well for reference. The stock suspension can reach full droop under "certain circumstances" ask me how I and that raised speed table know . Its good that you left the length alone. I bet you pretty much have the stock ratio being lowered on progress. For those who want super low drops shortening the reds would work with coilovers or stech perhaps.

 

Then you've never driven with me. There's one or two places I normally drive where it happens, but it's quite annoying and I imagine can't be great for the internals.

Give me a bit, I'll hopefully be back with a picture or two. If only I didn't leave my good camera back home... :\

 

Alright, here's what I've done.

Top part of the strut, from the top of the lower spring perch weld to the top of the strut insert body:





Now the bottom part, hooked on the bottom of the strut body all the way to the top of the lower spring perch weld:



8 13/16" + 3 3/16" is 12" even, from the bottom of the strut body to the top of the insert body.

 

Now, here's the position of the LCA with the strut fully extended (topping out)





And here's my ball joint thinking these could be the cause of most if not all of my suspension noise.



Unfortunately my tie rod ends look to be in similar condition...