Sean T

After installing my co's a few weeks back, I decided to wait a couple weeks for them to settle before trying to get the height exactly where I wanted. So today I measured the ground to fender height all around and found that only the front
left gap was about 1/4 higher than the others.
So I popped the wheel off and adjusted the CO down about 1/8 of an inch. Now, unless I am totally missing something, you bring the perch down to lower the car, and up to raise it, right?
So I put the wheel back on an let it down, and now it's almost 1/2 higher than the other side of the car? WTF? I thought maybe it had to settle because it had been up in the air (don't ask me where I got that one). But that didn't take care of it. Does anyone have any BTDT's or advice on what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks,
Sean
99A4

Another Drew

You only did one corner and then measured the height?

Sean T

about 1/8th of an inch, maybe a tad more. Didn't touch to other 3. And it's now higher!
Maybe I'm just totally missing something, but it's damn annoying.

Sean

SAvant

Did you move/roll/drive the car before measuring? It won't settle just sitting there.

Adam S

Go take it for a ride around the block and then remeasure.

Cool Craig

I have these, the two red anodized collars should have been set to the appropriate distances from the bottom of the shock prior to install, you probably got it somewhere close all around, if you dont get it close prior to install, things are not fun. My installer actually re-did the rears because they were initially WAY TOO LOW. Like I said, you probably got that close, so lets move on....
When you begin to tighten the upper, bigger collar, this means thread it UPWARDS, you should also be compressing the spring...what happens when a spring is compressed?? What happens to a car when the springs get SHORTER?? If you thread the spring DOWNWARDS, the spring de-coils to its maximum unsprung condition. If you keep going, eventually the spring will become loose in the shock body.
Sometimes you have to go both ways...... ;/

Audiboy

They make great slip plates No they didn't teach me that in school. I just slipped on one and when I bang my head, I had an idea ;P j/k

BTW, when adjusting coil overs, think like a table with 4 legs and some heavy flowervase on one end

WClark

First thing to consider is that adjusting the perches changes the weight on the wheels. One of the possible visual clues that one wheel is much more or less loaded than another is the sitting height on a perfectly flat surface relative to the others. Scales is really the only good way of getting the setup balanced initially.

Anything but a flat surface will skew your measurements.

The suspension needs to re-seat itself by having the vehicle driven a bit or your measurements will include some binding induced errors.

It is normal for an empty car with perfectly balanced corners to sit slightly skewed. Balancing should be done with the car normally loaded (e.g. fuel, driver, passenger?).

You say 1/4. Is that 1/4"? If so, I would say that is not worth trying to dial out for its own sake.

J. Daniel

Moving the perches and eyeballing the height is not the way to go. If you don't have a way to measure corner weight you should set the perch at the same height on each shock body.

Audiboy

That gave me an idea of how much each corner moved with the added weight. I haven't corner weighed my car, but at this weekend's Pro-Solo, I will. I have a very evened out car with a 180lb driver on board. I usually play with the rears to compensate for the corner loading, after I do an overall front-rear adjustments.

BTW, I started with setting the perch even when I first installed the Koni's. I even used a caliper. After install, on all the kits I did, it is always for sure that the ride height is out of wack on all corners. The rears especially settle a lot more.

Reason I ask to think like a table is because adjustung one corner will typically raise the other two and lower one. It has to be done carefully and slowly