Originally posted by dion:
When did you get Leda's?
I worked on my setup with the vendor all through March. Recieved my stuff mid April and installed it right away.
There is a couple drawbacks to the GC kit that I could not live with:
- Any aftermarket strut for the Contour is too long for the ride height I like. With the springs GC supply with the kit, slamming the car down (Antonio, Bernie, me, etc..) puts you 1/2" over the bump stop at the front. Racecar builders usually try to work with at least 3" of compression travel.
- GC's sleeve are resting on the old OEM perch. That's so high they are having to run a 6" spring for the front. At 500lb/in rate, take away 1.5" of compression just from setting the car down (gross estimate of front corner weight at 750lbs). There's about 1.5" of compression left until the 6" spring goes into coil bind. Even if you raise the car high enough to give good travel before the bump stop, you're still doomed with too little compression travel.
- GC's allen lock nuts seized in the perches at all 4 corners. The front's would spin freely, impossible to tighten. Means they were acting as the bearing, bringing the car up and down every turn of the steering wheel. Rears were as good as welded on, they were impossible to adjust. The stuff just insn't made to cope with salt up here in Canada.
At what setting? Check out the video of my car at Gingerman raceway and how little body roll was in the chassis... Then keep in mind that I have the stock rear sway bar, and I have removed the front one to balance the handling. Remove the front sway bar on any other Contour and see what body lean you get..
Max damping is almost unbearable if there's anything thicker than a penny on the road.
I run the fronts at 14 clicks and the rears at 12 on the street. It's very stiff at that setting, probably stiffer than maxed-out yellow Konis. This is the way I like it.
Do you have helper springs also?
Nope, I wanted a linear-rate race setup. If you wanted a progressive rate kit, you could simply add a helper spring kit on top of the setup.
My buddy runs Bilstein's PSS9 system on his Mk4 GTI, with helper springs removed. I wanted something that would top his setup in all-out performance for around the same money. I got what I wanted.
LEDA doesn't have a "kit" like other manufacturers. You can get what you want from them. I wanted my setup without mounting tabs for brake lines and front sway bar on the bodies, I wanted them threaded all the way down to the adjustment knob, I wanted shorter body and shorter stroke, 24 point tied-in bump/rebound damping adj., etc.
You can take it a step further and get some with external reservoirs, independent bump/rebound damping, etc. They can be revalved or modified if need be, etc.
