Reply to "Extreme Rear Suspension Compression"

Devin,

Your Koni's have a minimum length that's a bit less than the OEM shocks, thus allowing the suspension more upward travel than it should have. As George mentioned, the easiest way to deal with this is to install an extra bump rubber in your shocks. There are many different bump rubbers available from Koni but the one to add is the same one that comes with the shocks. This will decrease your suspension travel, under compression, by about about 3/4".

I have 18" x 12.5" rear wheels (ET 16) with 335/30-18 Hoosiers. The Hoosier's are about an inch wider than any other 335/30-18 tire. I had a problem with the tires rubbing the upper frame rail but the extra bump rubber solved the problem and you'd never know they were there. Now, I have absolutely no rubbing anywhere. As far as wheel offsets are concerned, be careful going too far inboard. In the case of HRE, the difference between a 12mm offset and an 18mm offset is the thickness of the center, so if you felt 12mm was too far outboard, the centers can have a few millimeters removed. As I mentioned earlier, my wheels have 16mm offset, so 18mm should be fine with 325 width tires, but I wouldn't go any further inboard than that.

As an aside, one of the benefits of the high pressure gas Koni's is, they control high spring rates very well. In an effort to fine tune the car's balance, I upped my rear spring rates from 550# to 700#! Believe it or not, there was absolutely no perceptible increase in ride firmness. I was very surprised! The car felt exactly the same after, as before. I'm sure other modern shocks are just as good.