So after dealing with broken damper adjustment knobs and poor ride quality, I had enough of the Stance crap and decided to build my own bigass baller Bilstein coilovers. Which was obviously inspired by Josh's thread:
https://www.rx7club.com/suspension-wheels-tires-brakes-20/%5Bfc%5D-bigass-budget-baller-bilstein-build-thread-955929/I also did some reading of custom Bilstein coilover builds on nissanroadracing.com
What I did was converted my old Stance GR+ coilovers to accept Bilstein 3000gt inserts and Porsche 914 dampers.
First, the Stance coilovers were removed from the car. You'll notice the rubbing from the rear lower mount.
Here are all of them completely disassembled. The rear dampers have been gutted, so all that remains is the "threaded sleeve".
After removing the Stance inverted damper you can see the guide bushings which are too small to allow the Bilstein 3000gt insert to slide in. Also the O.D. on the unthreaded portion of the "threaded sleeve" is too big to allow the Bilstein wiper seal ring to slide over.
My solution was to chuck the "threaded sleeves" in a lathe and machine the bushings to an I.D. of 1.812" and the unthreaded O.D. .001" larger than the I.D. of the wiper seal ring (I believe it was 2.120") to attain I slight press fit. I also machined the bottom of the sleeve just-because to make it look nice and clean.
After machining, the 3000gt insert slid in like a glove and I was able to slowly tap the wiper seal on with a dead blow hammer. The lower nut was tightened and voila, the front's were done.
The solution for camber plates was pretty straight forward. The upper thread/stud on the 3000gt insert is the same size and pitch as the Stance damper. The only issue was the length from the end of the thread to the shoulder is 10mm shorter compared to the Stance damper. While it probably would have worked as is, most of the thread engagement would be on the "bushing" part of the nut. I wanted to have at least some thread engagement in the "meat" of the nut. So I cut one of the spacers in half. Now I had two spacers each .180" thick. The bottom of the top nut also was also cut back to prevent interference with the spacer.
My original plan was to use the 3000gt inserts for the rear as well. But after doing some test fitting and measuring, I found them to be too long. So I did some research found that the Porsche 914 dampers were a good fit on the rx7. So I went ahead and ordered some. The 914 lower eyelet bushing I.D. is 18mm and the rx7 mount stud O.D. is 20mm. So I had to make a decision, turn down the stud or drill out the bushing sleeve? I chose the latter. To do this I used a 51/64" drill in a Bridgeport mill. If you're going to attempt this yourself, you need a very rigid setup. You won't being doing this with a electric hand drill. The rest was easy. The Stance and Bilstein upper stud are both 12mm, so I just bolted the upper plate on.
In addition to the Bilstein dampers, I also had to get Allstar threaded sleeves for the rear, Eibach spring spacers, and Hypercoil take-up springs. I also bought some new Hypercoil 250lb/in 10" rear springs. So with my 450lb/in front springs, I now have a 200lb/in split.
Here they are completely assembled.
The fit ended up perfect. The rear 914 damper body length is just right. With 25" tires, the bump stop is compressed just before the tire can contact the body. I set the bump stop travel for the front and adjusted my ride height. Boom, done.
The ride is soooo much better now. No more bounciness and taking it down some of my favorite back roads the car feels way more balanced and planted. I'm extremely happy with the results. This is all with stock valving. For track days and autocross I may consider revalving them, but for now they are perfect.
