I have felt like my right front has little to no suspension travel and I finally started to check into it. What I found, or think I have found is that the shock is not exercising its full range of travel. So I pulled the nut off of the strut and lowered the shock and removed the cover and what I found it that the shock only goes in this far by hand (both hands):
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Should my shock travel further into the strut housing? The shock is a green bilstein of unknown vintage, it is possible the car sat on them in the same position for 20+ years. It has good resistance/push through the rest of its travel. This just does not seem correct to me. Any info is appreciated.

Rob are you saying that is all it compresses?
It is an Green body insert? Is it Gas? does it rebound?

yes, this is all it compresses. yes it does rebound. I believe it is a green body, I did not pull it all the way out this evening and if my memory serves me it is green.

Rob, isn't the shock supposed to be all the way down into the tube where the top collar is? At least every Porsche I have ever owned the shocks were completely in the tube....
That just does not look right...
If the shock won't go all the way down into the strut tube, you have the wrong shock (too long)on that corner....is that PO stuff?
Now you better pull the other one to see what it looks like

DAN, The shock body is all the way in the tube. The problem is the piston is not depressing all the way into the shock body. Below is a picture of the green bilstein I found on the web. the large diameter piston is seen sticking out of the green body. I fully believe that the strut is installed correctly, but it is not moving through what I think is its full range of travel (depression) should be. Yeah, it's PO stuff. I've been running them for a while and I have been thinking that I did not have much suspension travel on the pass front so I started to investigate. The Driver side has a similar issue, but it does depress more than the pass side. At first I figured it was so stiff due to being lowered and having stiff shock, but that does not appear to be the case. I started to get more concerned with it when I was playing with the corner balance and adjusting the passanger torsion bar was having no effect('cause it's bottomed out).
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That is a Boge to Bilstein conversion and I'm not familiar with them. A standard Bilstein strut has adjustable segmented bump stops inside. Travel is limited by how many segments (4 max) are used...... each segmrnt is about 3/4 inch long. I have seen them hammered to bits. I assume something similar is used inside your shock.

Ok, my bad. the shocks are Yellow Bilsteins, not green. p/n 36-1 2 is on a sticker on the shock.
here is a picture of the shock
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and a picture of the total compression I can get out of it
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I still need to know if the shock is supposed to compress all the way into the yellow housing. I believe the car is sitting on the shock in its fully compressed state and I feel that this shock should go ALL the way into the housing. Help...