Some more progress to report tonight. I am planning on shipping out my shocks tomorrow to be rebuilt, so tonight I worked on removing the rear shocks. Following is a quick overview. Here is the starting point.

http://i983.photobucket.com/albums/a...pszi8gmtbg.jpg

Brake caliper and rotor removed.

http://i983.photobucket.com/albums/a...psqan9kmvh.jpg

And shock removed. In my opinion the quickest way about it is to remove the toe arm at the wheel bearing carrier and then to loosen the lower control arm at the subframe (camber eccentric bolt). Then, move up to the top, remove the three 13mm nuts that hold the shock mount in place and you should now be able to drop the shock down and remove it from the wheel bearing carrier.

http://i983.photobucket.com/albums/a...psur3xp2dm.jpg
http://i983.photobucket.com/albums/a...pswh078uo3.jpg

The last to-do item for the evening was to strip down the shocks of all hardware. Fronts done.

http://i983.photobucket.com/albums/a...psw8lp4ism.jpg

Rears done.

http://i983.photobucket.com/albums/a...psga9p0o60.jpg

Before shipping the shocks out, I wanted to get some practice refilling the built-in nitrogen canisters. Since I think there may be some value in sharing the procedure, I will post a separate DIY for that and link it here.

Who's doing your rebuild?

Tim Olsen of Olsen Motorsports. From my research it seems that Tim has extensive experience with JRZ/Moton rebuilds. He used to do rebuilds for Bodymotion and Napelton. He is also JRZ factory trained.

Good luck with Ti shims
 

Mihnea,
I've had good luck with Hard Ti shims and Pagid RS29 in not cooking the caliper seals. Interested to see what condition your thrust arm bushings are in. These are the last rubber bushings left on my car.

I've been eyeing this ERP suspension setup at Tarett

http://www.tarett.com/items/boxster~...lca-detail.htm

Probably complete overkill for my use but as they say "overkill is just about right".

Will you replace thrust arm with stock units or is there a way to get mono ball bushings for the thrust arms?

I'm also looking at these beauties:

http://www.stableenergies.com/Adjust...o/ERP-987-010/

Good luck,

Rob

I may give those a shot. Did it change the pedal feel much?

Yep. I'm familiar with it. It looks very nice. BMAN is running it on his Cayman. Maybe he'll comment.

Those are very nice as well. I think stock for now and maybe get the full kit you referenced above at some point down the line.

The goal for tonight was to remove the lower control arms. Here was the starting point:

http://i983.photobucket.com/albums/a...psg2oq8vlf.jpg

And the end point:

http://i983.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps29ec0b6b.jpg

I also removed the thrust arm bushings from the LCAs. These are only a season old, so they were in decent shape.

http://i983.photobucket.com/albums/a...psdsvzugfw.jpg

More to follow soon.

I have the ERP arms front and back. Only real challenge was that the spacers that go on either site of the spherical bearing way up in the body in the rear are a PITA. It is like a stack of quarters (there are three spaces on each mounting point - one thick and two thin) on either side of the bearing that has two little cones that want to push the quarters apart because of the boots. The rears had to be run all the way in (with some help) in order to get to the Boxster/Cayman length. I suspect the mount points on the 99x are a little bit further away from the LCA.

Interesting. And you combined that with RSS LCAs, correct? Any before/after thoughts?

Yes, if you get the ERP thrust arms and the RSS LCAs then I think you can use the simpler thrust bearing on the LCAs since you can adjust the thrust arm length vs. adjusting the thrust bearing. Also, if you put that combo on a 986 then you don't need to get 986-specific thrust bearing (they use Porsche's confusing hydraulic and non-hydraulic term but it apparently is just a slight difference in thickness at the LCA).

I changed so many things from a worn out stock setup that I can't offer commentary of the impact of the ERPs on drivability.

And here is the reason why the control arms had to come off. To install these beautiful thrust arm bushings from TPC Racing. Thanks Tom!

http://i983.photobucket.com/albums/a...psiggxzkap.jpg

All that can go back together once the new thrust arms arrive.