Gary M's Coil-Over Setup

This is Gary M's heavily modified, turboed 1983 Celica GTS. These pictures show off his coil-over setup and nice, shiny, slotted disks and drums. You can see the rest of his car at www.celicas.org.
You can click on each picture to see a slightly larger version.

The Front

The Rear

Here's the front of his car. Up here, he's got Ground-Control coil-overs. Current spring rate is 300 lb/inch and 7 inch length. The G.C. coil-overs drop right in in place of the stock spring. You even use the same shock. Gary is using the Tokico Illumina up here. Note the slotted brake rotor (how could you miss them!?!) and the stainless steel brake lines.

Briefly, here's the setup - Koni circle track shocks, 200 lb/inch, 10 inch long springs, Ground-Control hardware. The rear of his car required a bit of fabrication to get in the car, specifically, the lower and upper mounts. A couple things to note is that this setup looks like it will also work on solid-axle cars, and that the shock itself is upside down. (Thanks, TomD) Look at the (what I'm pretty sure are) slotted drums and large exhaust pipe! Here's what the man himself said about it: Ground Control built most of it, but I had to finish it on the car. They are KONI circle track shocks, with the lower mount adapted using urethane bushings to fit on the stock lower shock mounts on the trailing arms. I didn't trust the trailing arms to hold all of the shock and spring load, so I braced them with a plate to make it a box instead of just a channel, and also added a diagonal bar to be extra certain. This made the bottom end of the shock easy. The top was quite a bit tougher. I used the larger double shear shock shackles that G.C. provided, and welded each one to the head of a large (I think 5/8 inch) bolt which the protrudes up through the stock upper shock hole in the back of the wheel well area. Now the upper area is also being asked to carry the entire spring load. I realized the major load will try to bend the metal inward on bumps. I built up a brace that goes accross between the two large bolts I have coming up through the shock holes. I then also added a diagonal at each side to the trunk floor so if one was pulling in and the other out, it would still be braced. I tied these in with just small 12 mm head bolts and there has been no sing of movement at all. I have driven over 5000 miles on this setup, and most of that has been race weekends. He continues: I use the basic G.C. front coilover setup with Tokico Illumina inserts. They are set to 3 or 4, and the KONI's are set full soft. I run 325 lb/inch 7 inch long front springs, 8 inch may fit if you don't want to ride super low, and you will then have more travel available. I run 200 lb/in 10 inch long rear springs, and there is plenty of adjustment range to get any ride height imagineable. Balance was quite good with a bit more oversteer than I would like at some times, but I had a very odd stiff sway bar set on. Now I am back to stock bars, but have not tested it yet. I may go a bit stiffer with the rear springs. By the way, the rear setup has a 1.2 motion ratio to the shock, so the wheel rate is 1.44 times the spring rate, or 288 lb/inch. 210 lb/in rears may be better as that would give 302 rate at the wheel.