Has anyone fitted coilovers to the rear of a Series 1?
Whats the process to do with strenthening? can anyone reccommend a company? (northlondon/herts/essex?)

 

both sets of mine have fitted with no problems
ive got a rear strut brace on the shock towers

2 companys that do them
gaz and mef motorsport(off here)

gaz are £495 for 4 i think
mef are proper motorsport bilsteins @£495 for the rears only
mef fronts are £295 i think
you pat for quality

 

Or you can go to a larger diameter coilover, Leda's, but to fit them you will need to modify the rear turrets.

but as nIgel says, you do pay for quality, if i was to buy another set for another RST i would definately go to MEF, i have just got some rear suspension parts from them and the quality is superb
The units are built to order so there is a short delay, depends on how soon you want them and how much you want to pay??

 

A set of MEF billies are about 1k IIRC.

 

i must of got a discounted set lol

 

do you need to strengthen the turrets if fitting the Gaz units?

bassboy

 

nope but a strut brace would be a good idea

 

nigel...i had a word with someone who supplies these and he said the following:

Just got of the phone with them, there kit is designed for competition use and therfore requires some adjustments to fit.
Basically the whole assembly fits where the current damper is, it uses an ally spacer to allow the spring and damper to fit under the turret, this puts considerably more pressure on the turrets than they were designed for so they advise the use of a strut brace and if possible seem welding the turrets to strenghten. The cost of the GAZ rears on there own is £335

so strut brace will be sufficient?

bassboy

 

strutbrace and seam welding id say lol

 

The turret top is welded all the way around as standard to the inner wing panel so no additional welding is required there. May be worth extra welding on the vertical seams of the inner wing below tthe turret top although I have never seen any problems arise when coil-overs are fitted to standard non-strengthened cars.

Martin

 

Years ago I had a set of Leda coilovers fitted to a mk3 cabriolet, they fitted fine and i had no problems with the turret. As for quality, I have just bought a set of coilovers for my FRST from Leda and they are top quality, a real improvement over the stuff i had on the escort. They also build to order and can do you struts with different size spring ID's.

 

I now have a batch of rear strut tubes in stock so I should be able to speed up delivery on these now. The current delay is the coil springs as they come direct from the manufacturer, they make them in batches so sometimes the delivery is a bit slow.

Regarding the Ledas, I had a set of them on my RWD Rover200 but the piston rods kept bending like they were not properly hardened steel, ie like they were made of plastercine! I had them replaced several times, it's good that they are fully serviceable, I have heard that Leda has changed ownership, maybe the quality is now better?

It's hard to beat the inverted design of the Bilstiens with the 40mm upper tubes, they certainly got it right back in the 70's with their design concept, recently sucessfully coppied by AVO. I think the AVO 40mm inserts are very good, I have thought about fitting them in my struts, allowing adjustability over the well proven Bilstien inserts but that would put the price up a further £35 each.

Martin