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Porsches were tested rigorously in mountainous terrain. Initially around Gmuend in Kaernten and later from Zuffenhausen Southward. BergMeister Tour stuff!

In our next chapter of the Sports Mods we take the suspension to another level. Based on our experience a road going early 911 which has an occasional track day outing and runs in a navigation rally now and then needs no adjustment of the front torsion bars, nor sway bar size. The Green Meanie was such a car (see Part 1) and Silverado, despite its more radical S/T look, still runs standard suspension up front. To take your early 911 to the next level of reversible sportiness you swap out the rear torsion bars. We went with the early Turbo spec of 26mm and in combination with the rear sway bar you are now very near the optimum for these early, narrow body cars.

Rear Torsion bar swap in combination with sway bars results in a very well tracking early 911.

It is now time to consider ride height adjustment, since your rear suspension has been dismantled any way. A corner weighting job and ride height adjustment are the final stage in getting your 911 ready for the purpose you seek. If you drive a navigation rally now and then, we recommend a 61cm ride height on the rear axle as the starting point. You balance the car from there. This gives you about 3 cm more surface clearance than standard and prevents the body from scraping most back road humps and bumps. If you like a lower stance and plan to run your car in track days, we recommend a 55 cm ride height rear as the starting point. Measurement from the inside top of the rear wheel well across the wheel centre to the ground.

In many cases early 911 enthusiasts start thinking about mods in the engine bay, but these are very expensive in comparison to some of the simple changes. The suspension changes give a major bang for the buck, trust me!

Most classic oriented tires are too compliant for serious driving. The Green Meanie was sitting on these Michelin road tires originally.

Having gotten the basics right you will now start to notice that the tires you are driving on become the weakest link in your car’s set up. We have tried a range of Classic oriented tires in the original dimensions and slightly wider versions. Most were a disappointment the moment you started to do more than drive in a straight line… In the straight line the Michelins were running under Green Meanie were nicely compliant, but the moment we took to some more twisty roads there was too much roll. So how do you solve this? Well, there aren’t too many options available. I have run Pilot Sport Cup tires on the 2.4E and they were just great for track use. What an improvement. But they look wrong on the car, as their aspect ratio is too small. The best alternative for us was the Michelin TB 15 tire which we mounted on deep sixes front and 49mm offset 7 inch Fuchs in the rear. Drive the street at about 2 bar of pressure and go to track days with about 1.7 bar cold and you’ll have a great allround solution.

A weld-in strut brace is great for race cars, but not an easily reversible mod for the valuable early 911. Better to go with the WEVO Camber King in that case.

The final touch to the front suspension set up we recommend is the installation of a strut brace between the front shock towers. In my race car there are two welded in pick up points now, to stabilize any flex of the front wings during heavy cornering. This way my camber is more consistent. In your early 911 though, you wouldn’t want to weld anything in per se. So, before you do the alignment and corner weighting, you install a reversible solutions, like our WEVO Camber King set. This allows more camber adjustment AND gives you more rigidity during cornering. You can select your solution in our parts shop here.

WEVO Camber King