Renault 5 GT Turbo conversion - December 06 Coilovers

How to convert to coilovers

This is a guide on converting your shock absorbers to coilovers, using your existing shock absorbers and an adjustable spring seat kit.

This is a great way of having adjustable ride height without the cost. Once converted you can run any 2 1/4" spring that will fit between your platform and the underside of your strut top.Here's a picture of the kit


First of all you need the kit from somewhere like Rally Design, bare in mind you struts need to be less than 2" in diameter or you may have to find a more specialised product, also when you order pay attention to whether the top of your strut is either a round 10mm or D shape.

My conversion was done on my Renault 5 GT Turbo that I have converted to rear wheel drive, I have used phase 1 shock absorbers on the front and phase two on the rear. You can use either phase shock on either phase car providing you use the matching strut top. One other distance is the total length of the shoch absorber travel which caught me out when ordering the springs.

The process of fitting the coilover kit is actually quite straight forward. First follow your trusty Haynes manual to remove the shock absorber and with the aid of a set of spring compressors (quite a cheap tool) compress the spring and remove te strut top.
Then remove the springs from the strut.

Once these are off you can slip the new spring platforms over the shock absorber, you may need to file down any lumps or bumps stopping the threaded tube reaching the old spring platform.
At this point you have two options 1)leave as it is and tack (weld) the sleeve to the strut or 2)remove the majority of the old spring platform. I removed mine mainly because it gave me a lot more room to work and more options to change the shape of my suspension turrets at a later date, it also made them look a bit more like factory coilovers (if I were to spray them).

Either way you will need to tack the threaded sleeve to your strut, you need to be careful at this point as I have been told not to get the strut to hot as it could damage the shock absorber. My best advice is to prepare where you are welding making sure the metal is clean and look for points where the sleeve and shock are already touching as opposed to trying to bridge a gap.

Okay with the sleeve secured, now would be a good time to clean up the shock absorber and paint if desired (don't paint the threaded sleeve) I put a bit of copper grease on my sleeve this gives it a little protection against corrosion.

Now thread your two threaded collars onto the thread and wind them down to the bottom as far as they will go without forcing them. The reason for two is that one will lock the other, ideally you will want a 'C' spanner for adjustment they aren't very expensive around £5 each

Next on will go your spring - Springs will require a bit of research hopefully the guys where you bought the kit from will be able to give you advice as there's a huge range of poundage and lengths

Following this by the last part of the kit the top spring seat, hopefully you bought the right one and it fitted nicely, finally re-fit your strut top assembly which should go over the top. Despite choosing what I thought was the right size I needed to bore the hole out so I could get the original strut top back on. I did this with my pillar drill ensuring the hole remained central as this part is to keep the spring in line.


Just before you fit the shocks back to your car make sure you nip up the height adjustable collars so that the spring isn't wobbling around.

There you have it fully adjustable ride height