Project Viper: Part 13 – Lowering the car with KW Coilovers

After removing the top and bottom bolts, the rear spring and shock came out with little fuss.

The front suspension is mounted much lower in the suspension, with the coiled spring well within the upper control arm.  The front suspension is also an “SLA” layout with an upper and lower control arm.

The front spring and shock was even easier to remove than the rear.  You can clearly see the upper control arm’s two mounting bolts that protrude into the frame rail.  On the back side of the mount, the gold ‘ears’ of a spacer are visible.  These are camber shims designed to be removed to add negative camber for track use.  I think this is just so cool and shows how track-focused the Viper really is.

Now that the stock shocks are removed, we can compare them to the new KW V2 Coilovers.  The rear shocks (on top) are easily distinguishable by the massive forked lower mount.  The new KW rear suspension has the same overall length as stock.  Because of this, we needed to cut down the bumpstop a little in order to gain back some of the compression travel that we will lose at our new lower ride height.

The front shocks (on bottom) are much shorter overall, and the new KW coilover has a shorter shock body than stock.  This will ensure that we have enough compression travel when the car is lowered.

The rear shocks slid back in easily and were bolted back onto the car.  The thin ‘helper spring’ keeps tension on short main springs when the shock is fully extended.