Guy2dogs

Last night I was talking to someone at the station where I get my gas (I know the owner). We got to talking and the conversation turned to cars. He went on to tell me that the new Gen 5 F-body front struts are the same design as the Gen 3's and they can be swapped. I thought he was full of hot air until i saw a picture on the net. Is he making smoke or can these items be swapped?

rlewi771

long story short, he's full of smoke. the 5th gen is a MacPherson strut set up while a third gen is a "modified Macpherson strut"

you will see that the 5th gen has the coil wrapped around the strut body itself whereas the third gen has the coil spring seperate of the strut.

While I suppose you could put the strut itself in place without a spring, the valving would be all wrong and a pointless swap.

Twin_Turbo

iTrader: (25)

The valving would not be wrong if you adjusted for the difference in spring vs wheel rate due to changed spring position. However, I have a hard time believing the 5th gen struts will bolt to our spindles. It mounts in a similar way but what are the chances the bolt holes and mounting width are the same? Someone needs to go & measure

rlewi771

how would you make said adjustment?

Twin_Turbo

iTrader: (25)

Stiffer springs, but the 5th gen will prob. have softer springs any. The further the spring is from the spindle the bigger the difference in wheel vs spring rate (same for shock location, wheel vs. shock rate), nutcracker effect. A spring mouned further inboard sees a larger force arm from the susp. and as such needs to be a higher rating vs one mounted closer to the ball joint.

Reid Fleming

iTrader: (2)

Even if the struts did fit, I question whether there would be a performance improvement. Lots of 4th gen people complain about the decarbon shocks that come in those cars as being low performance. While the engine and brakes on a 5th gen are certainly higher performance than our stock setup. I wonder if the struts would be any better. Say on a scale of 1-10 with stock 3rd gen struts being a 1, KYB being a 3, Bilstein being a 7 and Koni being a 10. Where would the 5th gen struts fit in? Maybe a 5? I don't know.

rlewi771

gotcha. I was thinking wheel rates when I said the valving would be wrong. Thinking that if you were to change the struts and everything else stay the same, then the valving of the strut is not going to match, or work well with the different location of the spring. The 5th gen was designed to have a spring over top of it, acting more directly upon it, and the third gen was not designed in that same way so the valving would not match the setup.

and that is if they would even fit. I dont see it being a worthwhile upgrade at all. By the time you find the correct balance with springs/struts, you may as well have used something designed by the experts ie. koni

Twin_Turbo

iTrader: (25)

If they fit it does open up a whole aftermarket range of stuff, I wouldn't be interested in the stockers

DBLTKE

iTrader: (1)

I recall someone here on TGO worked for a company that produced a coil over for a 5th gen and he said that they are very similar to a third gen. He also mentioned that he was going to push for them to make a coil over for a thirdgen. I'm going to have to dig that up and see what became of it.

T/Aperformance

Well this one has got me to think, Doesn't the fifth gen struts and shock have magnetic fluid that is controlled by a computer to make perform to road conditions and driving style like on the corvettes and caddy svt. I am sure the performance model fifth gen ZL1 does, And if they will work on a third gen would make an interesting set up if you went all ls engine, trans, computer.

Guy2dogs

Sorry I have not been on to thank everyone for their input. But I was thinking about what T/A was saying about LS engine, trans, and computer. A friend of mine gave me an '89 GTA. Before everyone tells me how lucky I am, it came with no motor, no trans, no rear, and no interior. The foundation is straight (body, chassis, etc,), the title is clean, and half the work is done for me because I would like to retro fit pieces from newer model trucks and cars. I started looking on salvage sites and saw that there are lots of 'total loss' 5th gen cars out there to use instead. Let me know if this sounds like a good idea or not.

PS: I already have a stock GTA rear sitting on a lower back self for the GTA.

Sojer

He made that post thirdgen z06 and a long winter post. I don't see them working as they are different hights so u won't have much travel on the 5th gen strut. The ZL1 struts may be worth it but on pro tracking they use different struts so they have their limits. Remember the new camaro was not based off of F Bodies but G8, CTS, and other Holden cars.

InfernalVortex

iTrader: (4)

I still dont see the advantage of a coilover setup except for ride height adjustability. Just not a real performance gain in exchange for putting the weight of the car into a strut tower that isnt designed for it.

That said, with the availability of very, very nice struts for these cars, such as the Konis and Bilsteins, I dont see a good reason to try to cobble 5th gen struts into it. HOWEVER, I forget which version... the 1LE? The ZL1? That has the electronic magnetized struts that are actively computer modulated electrically to adapt to different road conditions. It would be pretty sweet to adapt THAT over to 3rd gens. But I imagine the R&D and extremely in-depth knowledge necessary to retune the system for our cars effectively would take likely decades.

morrow

i had this same idea also, i remeber some one who works for a company, i want to say vari or air ride tech said they were working on a set, i also emailed paft and they blew me off , and shot it down, but as far as dimentions i believe they are the same, vlaving like said above would need to be changed, i have a good friend of mine working for race runner, sway away shocks, we are currently trying to design a front strut for my rs and see how it turns out and one set for his 5.0 fox body

morrow

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/susp...oil-overs.html

morrow

highly agree

Guy2dogs

OK, but can you use the 5th gen struts without the coil overs or are they part of the 'package'?

morrow

i dont see why you couldnt, just remove the coil.

Guy2dogs

cool, thank you

morrow

as long as the mounts are the same at the spindle, and there is a good chance you will need to make a new upper strut mount, im not to sure on that one, ive only looked at pictures, i havent been able to do it myself yet. not exactly on the high list of things to do yet lol

InfernalVortex

iTrader: (4)

Why bother? There are plenty of excellent struts available that are already tailored to our application?

morrow

yea, that is true, qa1 makes a nice set

DBLTKE

iTrader: (1)

There is MUCH better stuff out there than QA1.

Confuzed1

iTrader: (4)

Yes there are, and they're designed for a Thirdgen. Just the weight difference between a 3rd and 5th Gen alone tells me the valving will be quite different....even if there close, I wouldn't want to got through the hassle of trying to adapt things. There's nice aftermarket things you can do, again, designed for our cars that can make our cars out-handle most anything out there.

I'd rather transplant the engine out of a 5th Gen into my car...

morrow

santhuff makes a nice set for our cars also, im trying to design a set with race runner

morrow

if i remember correctly , penske also makes a nice set

morrow

http://www.penskeshocks.com/Penske_Shocks_Struts.php

RaverRacerX

im pulling a necropost because this thread is relevant to me.

anywho..

i would want:
the MRC struts from the ZL1 w/ the supporting electronics. why? the tuning ability. if you were to look up the MRC promotion videos, the tuning program used isnt all that complicated. the sensor package would be fairly easy to install (steering position, suspension position, vehicle speed, wheel speed, yaw, lateral g, front end dive, etc). the hard part would be getting the controllers to work together on the makeshift GMLAN. "oh looky, i have a completely and infinitely tunable suspension that i can change from teh cockpit and adapt to any road condition and type of racing with little more than a few clicks of the mouse"

afaik, the penske struts are not available for the third gen and neither are the pfadts. so.. what are the differences besides valving? shaft length? threads? diameter? besides penske and pfadt, maybe moton and a couple others.

paul_huryk

Probably almost everything:

Shock length

Shock stroke

Mounting points for top & bottom

Shaft diameter (might be the same?)

Valving (if not adjustable)

Outside diameter


Like other have said, there are 3rd gen replacement options out there - ranging from replacement KYB to 2 way adjustable Konis.

Keep in mind that a fully modified 3rd gen will easily outhandle a 5th gen with similar mods on the same sized tires, no contest. Ride quality is one good 5th gen characteristic that the older cars don't have.

RaverRacerX

from what ive found, the 5th gen strut has a lil over an inch more extension and about a half inch in compression. this seems like it would actually be a good thing for our cars.

ive read that the lower mounting point is either VERY close or just about dead on.

what i havent found is the diameter and thread difference to the third gen shocks or shaft length. if by some chance its even very close, one could probably adapt them.

kyb to koni isnt exactly the biggest range of selection

InfernalVortex

iTrader: (4)

Koni pretty much has the market covered on high quality adjustable performance shocks and struts. Very nice pieces. If you want better than Koni you go Penske or some other custom made race-style shock/strut combo. If you want cheaper you go KYB.

If the Koni's weren't good enough things like this conversion would make a lot of sense, but the Koni's really are very, VERY good.

RaverRacerX

my curiosity of the struts working goes beyond shock selection as my first post implies . im still looking for a bcm with the mrc programming on it.

however.. qa1, koni, bilstein, and kyb is a fairly narrow range no matter how you look it it. being able to add pfadt, penske, and moton would be wonderful on a lot of levels.

paul_huryk

You do realize that few if any third gen owners would drop the amount of coin to put new Penskes or Moton dampers on their cars - I wouldn't. None of those companies will make a drop-in third gen strut unless there is enough market for them to take a chance, right now there is not.

Now, you can custom fit a few high end aftermarket dampers if you want to fabricate, or for example - have a tubular front clip with a C5/C6 front suspension that can mount another variation properly.

monkey-leader

Grave digging, but I'm curious how this turned out. There's lots of accidented Camaros now and some decent aftermarket stuff. 4-way adjustable (High/low speed rebound/compression) shocks/struts would literally blow Koni's out of the water. They are not that hard to tune. Also, nothing to say that you cant just remove the spring from the strut and use the stock spring perch.

There is a lot of hidden interchangeability in our cars that some vendors would not like us to know about, they get comfortable pawning off moderate upgrades as top of the line. Makes me wonder what other car's parts might bolt in.

Imagine a set of these...

http://en.intraxracing.nl/merken/che...t4/che5519-4w/