Spring Plates?

[gymmoe]

Would you put adjustable spring plates on an early car or would you keep the non-adjustable? Would a early car lose any value by changing to adjustable,even if the adjustable were Factory. Would you change them if your car was a 911S? What about turbo tie rods, if your car is a 911S would turbo tie rods be consider an acceptable upgrade or not? How many of you out there have or have not made these upgrades on your car and why or why not?

[Eric911S]

Hello: I would do all of the changes you are asking about. These will make the car feel better and you can set the car up.The spring plates could be put back on with new bushings and the old tie rods through those away. I believe that you should make the cars better and handle better. Keep your old parts if you worry about the value. I think you will find that the Porsche people who actually drive there cars will want the upgrades. Thanks Eric

[GreenT]

Hey - nice meeting you at GAF - by all means, do it all. Look at it this way, if the factory had thought of either of these improvements before 1973, both of these pieces would be on the cars for sure. The turbo tie rods are a nice improvement for not much money. The adjustable spring plates will be more work and more money, but your alignment shop will love you for it. If you find used stock ones, the 30 year old rubber doughnuts will likely be hard as rocks and out of shape. You can't buy stock replacement rubber bushings because they are vulcanized on at the factory, and a new set of spring plates from the dealer is $1100. The aftermarket poly replacements are too harsh on a street car, so most people go with the Neatrix bushings. I know many people swear by these, but in my case they just would not fit on the car. So I ended up sourcing another set, off an SC with just 30k miles, where the stock bushings were still in good shape. There are some beautifully made aftermarket spring plates available now, also not cheap. Out of all those, the Elephant Racing pieces look the best to me. The steel and bronze bearing arrangement they came up with is a very solid bit of engineering. Another brand, I forget which, is also nicely made, but uses a needle bearing setup which I don't think would be as happy in the long run. PartsHeaven recently got two SC's in which would serve as good donor cars if you want stock pieces. Heck, get the whole setup and change to the aluminum trailing arms and bigger brakes and swaybars, that's what I did. There is also a dismantler in the LA area currently offering a complete SC suspension and brake setup, front and rear for $1000.