Test Drives - first impressions.

Ride quality is excellent! The car feels a lot more precise in everything it does, but not harsh. With the H&R Red (turbo) springs and Bilstien HD shocks it seems like the perfect combination of control and comfort for street use. Today is the 2nd test run down the normal commuting route and both drives were equally enjoyed.

The suspension does give a jarring ride. Some places where the car was difficult to control (crossing heavily rutted intersections) seemed a lot smoother, which I found odd with the stiffer shocks and springs. The reason for this, I think, is the fresh components stopped the tendancy to pogo, because the shocks could not control spring bound/rebound. Whatever the reason, it's a vast improvement AND it did not ruin the day-to-day ride comfort!

There are some drawbacks. I'm not feeling what I'd call bumpsteer but it is a bit more skittish and tends to wander more on the road. I'm sure this is due to the basic (and I mean very basic) alignment I had done Saturday morning.

The reason for the basic alignment initialy is to test the ride height I selected (Euro RS + 5mm) in a real world environment. City, town and soon (some time this week) the state ferry system. All of these provide interesting ground clearance challenges. The ferry is the one I'm most concerned with. Tides in this area an vary more than 14'. That is a lot of ramp angle when you are talking about approach angles getting onto and off of that auto ferries. I hope I don't high-center the car. Nothing pisses off ferry uses more than a dead car or worse.. one fully blocking the loading ramp!

More thoughts to follow as I spend time driving the 964 on the commute. Now, the 993 is going to go in for some TLC, probably an alternator overhaul and to come up with a cleaver plan to hard-wite in the Escort radar detector power harness. I just completed a basic reverse engineering of the spare I have. Hopefuly my assessment is correct and I can duplicate the scheme, creating a switched 12v output to trigger stereo auto-mute as well as flash dashboard lights instead of a tiny LED. We'll see how it turns out.