I was looking in the bilstein race catalog for the valving for the VW rabbit race insert they sell (yes, that makes for a total of four available rabbit bilstein inserts) It is biased quite a bit towards rebound dampening.

Its listed as 270/100 for rebound/compression. That may be an indication of how the other 74-84 vw rabbit/jetta/scirocco bilsteins are valved.

If you wanted to save the stock 1200 strut housing for some reason these could be revalved by bilstein to suit the 1200, assuming they are 1.5 inch diameter like the other bilsteins. Part #v36-0059

If you're going racing I came across these reasonable priced double adjustable Koni's, which might fit if you welded 1.75 tubes on your struts. I'm starting to really appreciate the whole double adjustability thing. you can adjust them to suit a wide range of cars.

koni double adjustables

I've also found that superbike rear shocks are double adjustable, and several people are putting them on cars for the grassroots motorsports $2000 challenge. I found a chart listing stock spring rates for these rear shocks between 350 pounds (98-00 suzuki gsxr) to 740 pounds/inch (suzuki hyabusa).
These go for $40 each on ebay, used. If they fit the rear of the 1200 that would be great.

Yeah I just measured the inside diameter today of the stock 1200 strut tube. It was roughly 1.55 inches. A 1.5 inch strut would definitely fit, which means the bilsteins should work. It would be nice to have Koni's with decent valving. Anyone know the valving numbers for the NLA 1200 koni strut inserts? I'm going to look up the rabbit bilstein valving numbers to see if they can be compared.

My dad decided to go and buy some rabbit KYB inserts for his street car. Since he's a machinist making strut tube spacers to fit the shorter insert bodies isn't a problem. It looks like no cutting down of the strut tube will be necessary. The cap nut that holds the insert in needs to be drilled out, and so does the strut bearing, But it all seems do-able.

It's interesting, the rabbit insert is much shorter but the shaft length is about the same and seems to have similar travel to stock.

Also, I got confirmation from another person online that the rabbit bilsteins are 1.507 inches in diameter. This probably gives us the choice of three different rabbit bilsteins available: the stiff "sports" the softer "heavy duty" and the OE style "touring." I think thats pretty great.

Sundat do you have the ID on the stock 1200 strut yet? I know Koni's referance chart gives dimensions on some of the inserts vs a specific application as does Spax.

Tom

Quote:

"We" is referring to myself and my dad, we have three 1200's between us.

What the hell is a "doubting Thomas?"

Can we stay on topic here? This could be an important thread once one of us digs up some more info.

In case anybody cares, I thought I'd post this about rabbit Bilstein sport inserts to give you an idea of how they might work for you. For the archives:

Insert Length: 12.5
Insert Diameter: 1.5
Piston Compressed: 13.875
Piston Extended: 20.125
Piston Travel 6.25

Matt this is driving me crazy because I know something or other fits..............with my memory this week it could be that the inserts that fit are off of RX-7's or a friggin 68 Skoda for all I know.

Doubting Thomas????? Took me a minute to get that.............I'm having to deal with getting the tranny done for our 25ft box van at work and it's making me more neurotic than usuall...............anybody seen my med's?

Tom

ok thx tom ..

sundat's "we" is a doubting thomas

Matt I want to the 280ZX brake and coil over strut back around 95 mainly because Tom Neely at Neely Motorsports had a smoking deal on the entire front suspension...........this was about the time that tub GT-5 cars faded from SCCA Nationals. Before that I used Ferodo pads with the stock brakes. The pads helped a lot but I still thought the brakes reeeeeally weak. Since I use/abuse the brakes to rotate the car this may be a factor coloring my opinion.

OK Back on topic:

Around 1991 Dave Turners Performance World in San Diego gave me a whole list of cheap alternative stuff for 1200 suspension. One of the things was options on stut inserts and for the life of me I can't find it(I looked last night) but there was a real common car that had a strut that interchanged. I seem to recall it being 3/8ths of an inch shorter so you needed to shim it up. Could be it was a VW insert as my buddy Jerry the parts manager works at a place that specializes in VW stuff.
Now for the really sad part I gave away a whole stock front suspension set-up to one of the Utah guys and the struts have said inserts , which we could read the part number off of......aaaack

Tom

Another VW Rabbit bilstein option (if they fit) would be these "touring" inserts, which are OEM style inserts. They list for a rabbit at shox.com only $209 for a set of four. They may sell just the fronts for alot less. that's a good deal for an insert that might work great. I personally used these on a rabbit and the ride was as comfortable as a rabbit can be..
Pictured are the actual rabbit inserts.

sure, try it out for yourself and see how you like it, but you'll need to change struts because (like i said) they are larger diameter (like 510, z etc)