TopHat Issue St Coilovers
 

Hey guys, i am currently confused on the tophat situation regarding the ST coilovers. A lot of the images are broken on the forums (thanks photobucket..) and i am having a hard time finding this information. Now, does one completely reuse the oem top hat for the STs? I have heard that people remove the lower half of it, but I am having a hard time seeing how they do so since its one piece. I have it currently installed, and the front sits a bit higher than desired. Now, i think that might just be the added height from not removing the lower perch. Does anyone have insight or images on this? thank you!

How low are you trying to get it? You might be as low as they can go already?

Not low, I'm just curious as to the proper method of installing the coilovers.

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I thought the front spring perch on the OE top hat was supposed to be removed and replaced with the provided spring perch that comes with the ST's, I believe that's common with KW or any other spring/damper combo that uses a differently sized spring from OE.

Do you have an images of the set up ? I'm having a hard time finding information about this. Thanks for the input man

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Do they not come with instructions?

About 2:50 into this video they describe the top hat swap, looks like there's some awkward hardware going on, idk.

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30968

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...&postcount=183

http://www.racecompengineering.com/m.../brzt2-1_1.jpg

Hey thank you, that was super helpful. I think I did install it correctly.

If you're not going to use the OEM upper spring perch (and we do not as you can see in strat61caster's picture of our RCE coilovers), then I would highly recommend using the OEM conical washer.

Details in our instructions here:
http://racecompengineering.com/instr...structions.pdf

Our RCE coilovers are made by KW so instructions are similar for your STs.

- Andrew

Misunderstood your original post in the part about removing the lower perch, to me the lower perch is the threaded perch that the bottom of the spring sits on.

It looks like you meant the upper spring seat that's attached to the OEM upper mount? If that's the case, you definitely want to remove it.

How does one remove it? It's seems as if it's physically part of the top hat.

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It's not, it's just resting there, with the strut disassembled from the top hat it just falls away unless the lubricating grease has gotten all sticky.

(this is all about the front top hats, the rear top hats absolutely have the spring perch integrated into the top hat and is unchangeable)

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/attac...1&d=1365027777

What he said. Mine fell apart on me when I installed my front springs, and the car already had about 60k km's on it at that point.