Neon Coil-Over Conversions

Just like the title says, looking to see who is using what. I am looking at the GC kit, but I have heard people not liking them, although Lee Grimes likes their stuff he told me. I have also talked with Truechoice but they want $1150.00 to do a conversion using koni sleeves, circlips, ERS Springs and revalving the rear struts. I already had the fronts done this winter.

I know that especially the front of the neon has very limited stroke length. Looks like that the max you can go depending on spring rate is about a 1 " drop.

Spring rates I know that 500F and 700R seems to be about the consensus depending on bar size. I run alot at Nelson Ledges which is pretty bumpy. So I am thinking about 450F 600R to start with. The car has 22mm bars F and R.

Also what camber plates is everyone running on the neon. I am able to get all the negative camber I need out of th ACR bolts and slotted Koni's but was curious to see how much stroke length gain you get in the front switching from the stock rubber mount to say the Ground Control Plates.

Thanks in Advance.

I'm running the GC kit for coilovers and camber plates and think they work very well, no complaints.

talk to lee grimes again, you can buy the koni springperches/and clips straight from them. Price will be competitive with gc's and most people like the koni parts better. I actually have gc's but I basically got them included with my shocks, other wise i'd have koni parts. only complaint about gc's is that they have two sizes of perches and I got the larger ones that don't fit as tight to the shocks, the adapter for the circlip takes care of it (on the bottom where it mounts) but i'd rather have had the other sleeves. I'd especially like the other sleeves because i've had some very minor rubbing I could eliminate by running 2.25 inch springs

Do you have contact information for Lee? Thanks.

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Originally Posted by RacerBill

Do you have contact information for Lee? Thanks.

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his screen name over on rrautox site is crx lee. Or you can reach him at Koni in KY. Don't have the numbers in front of me.

Thanks.

I got the ground control kit and front camber plates but I am slightly concerned about doing the install. On my other cars that I have installed them on it was pretty straight forward and very easy to do.

The neon however involves some modifications it appears from the crappy directions. On the front it looks like I would have to grind the weld down for the spring perch to get the sleeve to bottom out on the perch.

On the rear I did not get the camber plates so I am re-using the stock rubber mounts. The GC directions say to remove the old spring perch from the rubber mounts which would effictively remove about half of the sleeve bearing if I did that.

Just curious if anyone has run into similar problems when installing a ground control kit on Koni struts.

I posted three pictures. The pic of the strut shows the perch weld that sits above the perch. In order for the sleeve to slide all the way down I would have to grind the weld. Is that a possibility. The other pics show the rubber mount. Included with the GC kit is a rubber upper spring perch which its id slides on to the stock rubber mount.
If I remove the any part of the stock mount there is nothing to keep the spring centered to the mount.

Thanks for any help anyone can offer.

As to the fronts- I don't think the sleeve is large enough to slip over the seat, even with the weld ground smooth. Measure carefully, because I certainly could be wrong, and if so, I spent money removing the seats and having a stop welded on 1 1/2" lower for no particularly good reason. Using 6 inch springs, running on the weld on my Konis I was able to get the ride height down maybe an inch at the most. The super short struts in the front of a Neon don't lend themselves to this sort of stuff easily.

Rears are kind of the same story for ride height. I would be cautious about grinding too much on the steel sleeve in the middle of the upper mount- they tear out of stock cars with normal shocks, so any compromise of strength there is probably not good. I would probably give up and pony up the dough for the camber plates.

An ?amusing? story- When I ordered my stuff from GC, it came with exactly no comprehensible instructions. There was nothing on the website other than a pic of the front plates. The fronts were relativly straightforward, although there was more cutting and grinding involved with the top of the strut tower than I was really happy with. The rears had one hole that kind of lined up with one of the four holes in the tower, so I drilled, ground, cut and hammered until they went in. I was on the website the other day, and the new pic of the rear plates looks absolutly nothing like the ones I have. No part numbers or words etched on the plates, no installation instructions...... Good product, not so good support maybe.

I'm running the GC coilovers on Koni yellows, with the gc cambewr plates. What I did was remove the spring perches completely from the struts by cutting them off in the lathe, then cut the weld down to a perfect flat edge in the lathe so that my sleeves slide over and seat perfectly over the welds. There is no way I would try and grind those welds down by hand...it would be impossible to get them even all the way around.