Some gratuitous extra pics...the old shocks that came off the car, the complete and assembled new coilover, the empty place where it goes, and the new coilover test-fitted in place. It's starting to come together!
I took out the wheel-well liners to make it easier to work on the front suspension and that was a huge help.
Turns out that the 7" springs in the front are too short. When the car is back on the ground they're compressed a bit too much and I'm convinced that they'll end up binding under compression. Not good. Next step is to order up some 8" springs to test out. The 7" on the back appear to be fine...we'll see.
Also got the trailer hitch mounted up today. That thing was a bear. Had to lower the exhaust to put it on, but the real PITA is that the exhaust is one piece from the cat flange all the way back to the tips. Once I got it loose from the hangers I had to brace it up below the car low enough to get the hitch into place but not so low that I wouldn't be able to get it back into place with the hitch there. I made that mistake the first time and had to drop the hitch again to get the exhaust tucked back up. I hate re-doing work 
At least now it's on...
You're doing it right.
Finally made some more progress. I had to refactor the coilovers a bit to fix a few things that weren't working out as I had expected:
The front springs were too short which meant that I'd hit coil bind before contacting the bumpstop. Solution: switch to 8" springs
Switching to 8" springs in the front meant that I would not have enough adjustment range to get the ride height lower than stock. Solution: have new snap ring grooves machined lower on the shock body to lower the threaded sleeve.
The rear springs were OK on travel, but since I switched to 8" springs in the front and they were a different brand (Hyperco vs. the original QA1) I decided I would rather have consistent springs at all four corners. Solution: purchased a set of 7" Hypercos in both 450lb/in and 500lb/in to test.
Also in the meantime I was able to get in on a group buy deal from WERKS Performance for a set of their brand new adjustable hollow front and rear Kappa platform sway bar set. Only the rear bar came in this week so I put that on as well. That turned out to be not as simple as I expected. The exhaust and the new trailer hitch had to be completely lowered in order to get the old bar out and the new bar in. A giant pain the arse, but now complete.
I've landed on 8" 425lb/in springs in the front and went with the 500lb/in springs in the rear. Everything is now back together and buttoned up with the exception of reinstalling the pax side fender liner (still need to clean that one up a bit). I did some driving around last night and everything feels really good. The ride quality is actually much better than I expected - not jarring or bouncy at all, and the car has almost zero body roll in cornering at street speeds.
Now on to the pictures...
The re-grooved front shock, thanks to Marty at Block Head Machine in Tukwila:
The revised front unit in place:
The revised rear unit in place. I think I'll ultimately need to have a new snap ring groove cut in the rears as well, but we'll see how that goes. There's only a smidge of room to go down before it would interfere with the CV boot...maybe 5/8" max:
Comparison pic of the WERKS rear bar compared to the stock FE3 bar:
Everything is back together, the trailer is rebuilt and rewired (though the lights are not yet tested), and one week to go before the SCCA season starts again. Unfortunately the car is now subject to the ignition switch recall! 
SWMBO is not crazy about me autocrossing the car before it gets fixed. I'll need to work on that...
I owned a 2006 HHR for 5 years and never had a problem with the ignition switch, even after my Daughter rear-ended a kid in a P71 at the 3 year mark (not ignition related, just not paying attention near the college campus, on her birthday no less). If a problem hasn't manifested itself by now, it probably wont ever. Most of the cars like yours weren't daily drivers, just fair-weather toys. Just take the ignition key off of your ring when you run the autocross so there's no weight other than the single key in the switch and you should be just fine.
Everything is looking good so far.
What fantastic weather outside today...I couldn't resist getting the car out in it for a nice photo :D
Ruh-roh. Time to run to Harbor Freight and take advantage of their Easter Sunday 25% off coupon. I had the wheels off of the trailer today to check the hub bearings and to shoot some grease into the hubs...I decided to clean up the wheels and tires a bit and discovered that both of them have dry-rot splits in the sidewalls. Kinda figures as they are at least 12 years old. At least they aren't very expensive - it'll be just over $50 for two brand new tire/wheel combos.
Glad I discovered this before making any long hauls.
Just did this (Trifecta Budget Tune):
All I can say is WOW! Best $200 I've ever spent on a car modification. Boost now tops at 22-23psi (compared to 14psi stock) and driveability is much improved. This thing is a torque beast!
Good build here, always giggle a little bit when I see Alex's Solstice pop up in various threads. That car is NASTY in person(he's local to me), and he's a wicked fast driver. Way smarter than I am and we're of a similar age.
First autocross with the car today...dry but cool, first two runs the tires barely had any heat in them, third run got a little better but was a bit too heavy on the throttle in spots, and then fourth run improved quite a bit but coned. All in all a decent learning experience! The power delivery is nothing like I've ever experienced before in any car I've autocrossed, with the minor exception of my '08 WRX (compared to Miatae, RX-7, S2000). With the tune it gets on boost very quickly and just GOES. There's another event tomorrow and I'm hoping for no rain.
Fun!
Time for some dyno results! I took the opportunity of a BMWCCA tech/dyno day to get the GXP on the rollers to see how much difference the Trifecta budget tune makes. Overall I'm pretty happy with the results. I'm a little perplexed by the boost numbers recorded by the dyno, as they seem 2-4psi lower than what the built-in boost indicator reports. I may need to add a real gauge at some point.
Short story:
Tune OFF: 219whp and 236lb/ft - max boost recorded was 12psi
Tune ON: 273whp and 311lb/ft - max boost recorded was 19psi
These three runs were back to back to back, the only difference was tune on and off.
Looks like I need to get that tune for our 09 gxp coupe.
Had one of those great days when I made a minor, quick, and free change that has massive payback. Ever since I bought the car I've thought that it had too much lower back (lumbar) support. It felt like there was a lump in the seat that was just too big, but the stock seats don't have adjustable lumbar support so I assumed that it was a quirk of the design that just didn't fit me well.
Today at the autocross event there was another guy with a GXP and for the hell of it I asked him if he had complaints about the seat comfort. He didn't, and I asked him if I could sit in his for a second to compare. Sure enough, WAY DIFFERENT. I was in the midst of changing tires and packing up to go so I just decided that I'd check mine out when I got home.
Thankfully the seat cover is a simple zip-on/zip-off affair, so when I got home I flopped the seat forward and unzipped the cover. Here is what I found:
I yanked that rolled up bedsheet out, re-zipped the seat cover and VOILÀ! No more lumpy seat! I'm kicking myself for not looking into this sooner!
In reply to CLH: Previous owner stuffed a bed sheet in the back of the seat? Weird, but a far better surprise than some of the things we've all seen in used cars. Love the car!
I did another simple mod yesterday that I hope will resolve a minor annoyance.
The shape of the stock brake/clutch fluid reservoir is such that under autocross conditions it tends to slop around and seep out from under the cap. This gets brake fluid spattered around the engine bay on that side. It's not awful, but I end up having to clean it up after every event. Not ideal. The problem is that the stock reservoir has a sloped front and that's where the filler hole and cap are. In normal driving it's no issue, but when you start flinging the car around cones it becomes a problem.
In searching around the internets I came across mention of a "performance" fluid reservoir that was available at one time from GM. This is a larger, taller, squarer reservoir. I found one posting that had a picture of it but no one had a part number or any way to even get it. Being the enterprising guy that I am, I looked again at the picture I found and discovered that if I zoomed way in I could just barely read the GM part number on it. I googled that part number and what do you know, I got a hit.
It turns out that the performance reservoir is nothing more than the standard reservoir from a manual-equipped Opel Vectra. I found one on eBay advertised by a breaker in the UK. A week later I had a used Vectra brake MC and reservoir.
I separated the reservoir from the MC, cleaned it up, and swapped it into the Solstice. Presto, perfect fit!
Now we'll see if my fluid slopping problem goes away...
Cleaned up Vectra part
Side by side, stock on left and Vectra on right
In place - looks like it was meant to be there
Awesome build... my dad is considering picking up a Sky redline so I'll definitely be paying attention to this thread lol
CLH wrote:
That's one hell of an improvement for $200! That huge bump at 3200 RPM isn't boost--is that VVT?
That guy at Trifecta knows what he is doing. The tune for my Buick Regal GS really woke it up.
The winter build phase has begun. Big plans for the car this winter...I already have a few of the parts on hand and now need to get the car up onto jack stands to start work.
A few things have already arrived:
Stainless-steel brake lines, courtesy of Rock Auto
Energy Suspension front and rear control arm bushings
Revised-rate springs for the rear (the rears are moving to the front)
Short-throw shifter from DDMWorks
Two major scores this morning:
Tire Rack has Hawk HP Plus pads on sale, got a full set for $140 including 2-day shipping.
Amazon had a screaming deal on Raybestos Pro-Grade rotors, and I picked up a FULL SET for $36.56 shipped! That includes Washington state sales tax. The fronts were $9.44 each and the rears were $7.25 each. SWEET!
After a season of autocrossing with the 425/500 front/rear springs decided to revise the design and spring rates a bit.
For the coming season I'm going to start by moving the 500lb/in springs to the front and lowering the rear rate to 450lb/in. The car has been a bit looser than I'd like so I'm going to see if I like a stiffer front bias a bit better.
Along with that, I wasn't entirely happy with the fact that I'm losing about an inch of shock travel due to the way the upper mounts are put together. Step one is replacing the existing upper mount arrangement with a fixed spring flange that fits over the bottom portion of the upper mounts. I had a buddy machine them for me on his Smithy lathe/mill.
The new spring locators are essentially just aluminum cups that fit over the bottom of the stock mounts and that the spring seats onto:
This arrangement allows for full travel of the shock and puts the compression load on the flange of the upper mount rather than on the center portion of the mount which is designed to have compliance. With that in mind, what pushed me this direction was discovering that the mount has enough compliance in it that under heavy cornering loads I was actually pushing the spring top hat up and into contact with the bottom of the mount. You can see in the picture below that despite how much space there is between the top hat and the mount, there is rubber transference on the top hat from compression contact. That's a lot of compliance! I can only imagine what that was doing to the consistency of the suspension control.
With the new spring locators you can now see that the shock gets full travel back and there is no longer such a large compression load on the center of the mount. Goodbye compliance problem!
This is really only an interim step however. The compromise of this new setup is that the springs will no longer remain square to the shock shaft as the suspension compresses and the angle of the shock changes slightly. It may not be a huge amount of deflection, probably in the range of 2-6 degrees, but ideally I don't want any deflection at all. What that brings me to is the creation of custom upper mounts with integrated spherical bearings so that I can eliminate both the compliance issue and the deflection issue (something like what's discussed here). More to come on that!
Mmmmmmmmmm.....tasty. Picked up a used set of 18x11 Forgestar CF5s to mount the Hoosiers on.
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