WARDY, i'm doing the same coil over conversion at the moment.

I just picked up a set of VW Golf Mk1 front inserts from Pedders, they fit in the standard struts perfect so no honing out the strut at all.

The Golf inserts are 100mm shorter than stock, so i'll be cutting 100mm out of my strut tube (or I might decide to cut 75mm out and run a 25mm spacer inside the strut) when I do the coil over conversion.

What i'll be doing is cutting the top of the strut off 50mm down, then cutting 100mm or 75mm out, then re welding the 50mm top section back on. This is good for two reasons, it will retain the threaded section for the cap to screw the insert down with and you'll see this top section of the strut is from the factory honed out about 30mm down which you'll need for the insert to fit as the Golf inserts taper at the top slightly bigger in diameter (actually the stock ones do too)

racetech, would be a good idea, but then need to find people that are running these setups to test wheels on

and then some wheels might fit over the brakes and others of the same size might not so its a bit hard to say exactly what will fit. could probably have a guess as to what would fit

13s would fit over most 250mm disc setups
14s probably 270mm
15s 290mm

and so on. but it also depends on the disc offset and what caliper you are using and stuff

I'm a little confused after reading a bit of this. I have been intending to put stanza struts (4bolt ones) in my 1200 ute as I have a car here I'm parting out but am now wondering if I should grab the bluebird ones that I also have access to?

Which would be better, trying to keep cost down but hear sectioning 50mm out of stanza struts, putting in 240k inserts and coil over sleeves makes a good 1200 strut but could I just do the same with a bluebird strut and end up with something better brakes wise?

Thanks for your help

depends on how much work you want to do, how big you want to go in brakes and what wheels you want to go

As stated at the start, R31 brakes go straight onto blurbird struts, but they have a rather small disc size to wheel size ratio....ooo fancy term.... meaning that to run the r31 250mm ish disc means needing to run 14s. compared to stanza 256mm discs that you can fit 13s over

bluebird struts should probably also be trimmed down for shorteer inserts if you are going to have a low ride height.
as bluebird struts use the same brakes as r31 struts, you have some easy bolt on brake upgrades, see DATSPORT r32/33 comversion. think you can get a 15 inch wheel over their 28mm disc setup, and 16s over the 296mm setup. they are some pretty big brakes, can come with a price tag to suit

but then being that stanza shares the same brakes as 200b and 240k there are also large bolt on conversions for them, see MADDAT rx7 conversion. think you can get 15s over their 276mm disc setup. not exactly awesome wheel fitment though

Then if you want to do like i did, make everything yourself, i got r32 calipers and r33 discs(296mm) and fitted them to stanza struts so they fitted under 15s. and costs were significantly reduced, but alot more time involved

but like i said, wheel fitment and brake size need to be known before one can be said that it is better than the other.
quick bolt on decent brakes for wheels bigger than 14s, bluebird is the go. but havent seen much/anything decent that will allow a smaller wheel than that

Spuwin I left the 4 pot brakes with R34 disk's on my R32 gts-t when i sold it.

I dont mind a bit of fabrication if I know its not a waste of time and its probably easier to get the stanza struts when I'm getting the lower arms and castor from it anyway.

I'm not overly fussed about wheels, I dont want big bling, would love old school jdm, but it seems price wise newer 15x8's like rb rota's with low offset would be the go or anything second hand... (I've got some ZG flares from an old zed project on the shelf that will fit the 1200 ute for wide stance, hehe).

Do you have any information posted about your Stanza skyline combo?

And can anyone recommend a cheap insert for a 50mm sectioned stanza strut (something that would go well with a stiffer coilover sleeve setup)?

Thanks again

there are some pics here and some more here
i used R33 296mm discs and r32 gtst/300zx tt calipers
you just modify the disc to suit the hub, enlarge the centre bore and redrill it to suit the disc bolt pattern

i had new discs and pads so i could sit the calipers on the disc and they held there pretty well to measure and made template brackets up. its all easy enough once the disc is on the hub


240z struts are pretty good for stanza struts, more than 50mm shorter though, but thats always handy as even with the z inserts if the cars low enough you can find the bump stops

Thank you, so the offset was enough for a 4 or 5mm steel plate to be welded in and drilled for the calipers or did you use something else?

Hmm if your still finding bump stops maybe I should go further. yz1975 Above mentioned a Golf insert but I dont know if they would suit a stiffer spring or not.

i used a piece of 12mm aircraft grade alloy and made it bolt onto the original mount on the struts, and then to the caliper, i had to use 12mm spacers between the bracket and caliper to get it all lined up...these could be welded to the bracket to make it one piece, you can see i nthe pics in my album

ive not come close to the stops with my struts. but i have inserts much shorter than z car ones. with the top of a 195 50 15 being almost inline with the bottom of the front guard the car had about 3-4 inchs of downwards travel, and only about an inch or 2 droop. that was using carmy inserts, which you cant get quality shocks for so probably not the best idea

Golf inserts suit the stock(1200/120y) struts, not the larger ones

Ok I got a question for the gurus

I bought a set of 200b struts with the "DATSUN" calipers and they have coilovers on them

One is bent ,not hard to tell when I bolted it in and noticed epic camber on one side and positive camber on the other side

Question is ,can I transfer the brales and #OOPS# onto my stanza struts and shorten them so I can make it super low ,and what inserts should I use?

Cheers

200b brakes and hubs bolt onto stanza struts - calipers too ( unless you have the useless early stanza non girlock struts)

Is your x member centered? Or shorter lca in one side of car?

Check that first