After upgrading to my springs and struts to the tokico ILK-252, I have been a bit concerned about the amount of travel in the front. The pictures posted below are of my car sitting at the curb, no passengers and a half tank of fuel.

FRONT

REAR

As you can see, the front has virtually no travel left. Even with the struts on the highest setting, around corners I can feel the front end bottoming out. The ride height does not look significantly lower in the front and the ride quality is not 'too' bad though I think it should be a litlle softer. I am concerned about damaging the strut insert since I did not install bump stops but that is another story.

Do I need to have tokico replace something or am I making a problem of nothing?

Front looks like a mess!

Do you have the ends of spring rotated to place end of spring wire into "pockets" of upper AND lower spring perch?

Did your shocks come with a "spacer"? Did you place it under the shock insert?

Only reasons I can think of for spring 60% stacked at ride height would be that shock is at full rebound (spacer placed on top of shock insert) and is keeping spring from extending. Or the spring is off the perches, or spring is defective (very low spring rate)

Are you sure that you bought the right shock and spring for your year car (previous owner may have swaped in different year front struts).

If I had to guess the main reason it would be that shocks are to short for this installation (wrong parts, or spacer in wrong place)

My question to you is HOW IN THE HELL DID YOU GET SPRING COMPRESSER OFF!!!!!.

The front are progressive springs. The 240Z when lowered has very little suspension travel. I believe you got what you paid for. You can adjust the firmness with the numbers.

I have verified part numbers with tokico and they are all correct. They did have spacers that were welded to the insert itself at the bottom. They were about 2 inches in height, but again they were at the bottom.

Springs are in their perches where they belong.

To answer how I got the compressor off, I actually did not need to use one. Believe it or not, I could actually move the spring up and down about 3/4" when the strut assembly was assembled. I have read in a few places that this is fairly common so I did not worry about it.

The idea of a PO swapping struts is not too probable, but has crossed my mind. My car sat since around 1982, also, they had the original shocks in the tube, no insert.

Tokico seemed to think that not having bump stops might be the reason but I do not see how it could affect ride height unless the car was actually bottomed out against them, where it shouldnt be.

When I jack up the front, they fully extend, which eliminates a short strut problem. Looks like I need to take the springs out and have them tested some how. Does anyone know if Midas or the like would be able to tell me what the spring rates are? A rep from tokico told me they are supposed to be 140f and 165r.

Has anyone used this specific kit (ILK-252) before? It is the one being sold on ebay all the time.

Just went and took some more pics. I have the fenders out so it makes it a lot easier.

Car jacked up....the wheel is still firmly planted to the ground

and at ride height

can anyone say that this much compression is normal?

If ,as Curtis240z said, the springs are progressive rate then I wonder how they accomplish that. All other progressive rate springs I have seen have a very noticeable difference in the distance between coils (3/4 to 1 1/4") of the soft turns and the final rate turns. The only other way to get progressive rate would be to have a tapered wire (smaller diameter at soft rate, larger at final rate) for the spring.

Is the bottoming in the front you feel is from lack of shock travel or from springs stacking solid? If it is from springs stacking solid then I would ditch the progressive rate spring for a steady rate spring (coils will be fewer and farther apart).

If the bottoming is from lack of shock travel then the struts need to be sectioned above the spring perch, but below the gland nut. The "peg leg" on bottom of insert will have to be shortened porportionately. The fact that you didn't need a spring compresser might be a clue here. I would guess that the amount to remove from strut would be equal to the amount of free play of spring to perch at full droop.

I would avoid progressive rate springs except for on vehicles that have large amounts of wheel travel (SUV's, luxury sedans) and not on our beloved Z's.

The shock insert (the body of shock) didn't move up/down after tightening gland nut did it? If it did, then strut tube definately needs to be sectioned.

Put some bits of clay (Playdough) between the coils (the ones that are not stacked already) and drive until you feel the bottoming. Add the total thickness of the THINEST parts of clay to find out how much spring travel remained after bottoming.

This will verify that shock travel is used up before spring travel, and will also tell you how close those springs will be to stacking solid even after you section strut tubes.

Hi

Maybe they are on backwards? Try swapping front to back, just a thaought.

Cheers & Happy New Year.

Ari

Your pictures look normal for the Tokico kit. I agree with panchovisa, I like straight rate springs better, but the ride isn't as forgiving.

Well if things look alright to tokico and a few others on here, I am going to go with that. Thanks everyone.

I'm glad somene posted pictures of what the Tokico Progressive springs give you when installed. It saves me the time, effort and money of getting something that I would not be satisfied having on my car.