Maruha BC coilovers

[HarryB]

Suspension re-assembled, and remembered to take a photo of the underside of a damper unit, so edited previous post. Some observations:

New bumpstops are a TIGHT fit on the shaft; while ID is the same as the previous one, the material being stiffer means they expand less. It also worries me that in the rear, the space left between the bumpstop shim and the top of the damper unit with the damper fully compressed is 14mm. This means the bumpstop can compress only for 6mm before the damper bottoms out internally, and I am not comfortable with this (although compressing these stiff bumpstops by 6mm will take some force). I will conctact Maruha to see their point of view, but most probably gonna turn some solid delrin bumpstop spacers on the lathe. That's a non-issue at the front, as the damper rod retracts fully, meaning that the bumpstop would works as it should.

Front springs are longer than rears. This goes against conventional wisdom, as stiffer springs compress less for a given load. For reference, fronts are 200mm while rears are 180mm, both sets are the typical (for coilovers) 2.5" ID.

The nuts that retain the damper rod on the top hat were both 14mm narrow-style ones, as seen here (photo from Maruha's website).

mar32433.jpg

OEM NB2 has a larger flanged lower nut to spread the load onto the top shim, and a narrow one on top. Went on and replaced the lower ones with OEM I had in hand, although I do not see this being a problem.

Maruha advises using grease on the threads when re-assembling them, to avoid corrosion and frozen together parts. I typically use copper grease, but had none, so I used CeraTec brake pad grease instead. Time will tell if that is OK. Grease attracts dirt, so plan on ordering coilover socks to keep most of it out.

I also found two metal clips, that most probably are used to retain brake lines on the front; however I have absolutely no idea how they are supposed to be attached to the damper body. Will take some pictures in case any of you knows.