re indexed rear Tbar on first try

[Brent 930]

It seems the rear Tbars are a pain to adj. from what I have read. For a while now I have been learning about suspension and alignment. I realized the height of my car was off and figured out the rear was the problem. The height was off by approx. 1/2" and had a choice to either lower the rear drivers side or increase the passenger side. Since my car is mainly street and there was evidence of some scrapping I decided to increase the torsion rate on the passenger side. Thanks to a buddy out of town who figured out exactly how to adj. the T bar in 1/4" incriments I followed his advice and got it done right the first time. He was dead on and my height measurements were too. I even marked the control arm and hardware exact with no pre load when doing this and got everything back where it was. Strangely enough it was alot of fun, maybe I'm going crazy?

Brent

[raceman]

when you tackle a job for the first time and nail it with no problems then it is fun.l hate to say beginners luck but l`m glad it worked out so well,people struggle for days just on disassembly sometimes.

[mtelliott]

If you didn't change the bushings, then it might not be that bad a job. For me, changing the bushings makes the work much more complicated. I have to go back and re-index since mine was off by 50 mm. I must have knocked the level out of whack. To adjust it, it shouldn't be any more than a two hour job.

[Brent 930]

Ah, not beginners luck...the guy who knew how was why it went so easy. That is once I knew how much the height was off. Here it is, counter clockwise 2 splines on the inside and then clockwise 2 splines on the outside. Each set is approx. 1/4", cool huh?

[widebody911]

Next time try the spring plate calculator:

http://vintagebus.com/cgi-bin/spring.cgi

[Schrup]

Thom beat me to it. That is what I used when I completely rebuilt my suspension & it worked perfect.

[Wayne 962]

WooHoo!

-Wayne

[hoosierdaddy]

This is the one job I keep thinking about doing myself but common sense tells me to leave it to my mechanic . Any tips or words of encouragement ?
Jim

[Jdub]

Jim:

If you mean replacing bushings, tbars, and repainting the spring plate and whatnot then yes, you can handle this. There is tons of information in the archives and you ought to put together a binder and go ahead and highlight the material that applies to what you want to do.

I keep several very, very thick binders with information from this 'board. I have a single, smaller binder that I use for the "job at hand" for reference (a traveling binder if you will).

John

[Brent 930]

Here is what I did, removed the rear drop link for the sway bar. Jacked up the side of the car and took the tire off. Scribed all hardware and the plate to the control arm so I know where everything was set. Took another jack under the control arm. Start to loosen the bolts (not the height adjust) and go slow so you can align the height of the control arm with the plate with no load. So when you take all 4 bolts off the plate is aligned with the control arm holes. Then remove the outer bushing cover with the 4 bolts. That cover will come right off and clean it up if you like. Then slowly work the spring plate out from the chassis and hopefully the Tbar will stay inside. This is already assuming you know how much the height is off and round to the nearest 1/4". For every 1/4" go one spline inside and outside like I mentioned earlier. Decide if you want more or less torsion and go for it. Once you think it's good you can measure between the control arm holes to the new position of the spring plate ones. It should be the difference you want or it's not set right. If so then using the jack under the control arm to align with the new position and start to bolt stuff down in the exact place you scribed. Still since the torsion rate was changed it will change the alignment x amount but it should be better to get it back where it was good before then not.

Goodluck

[Zeke]

Where does the torsion rate change if you don't change the T-bar?

[Brent 930]

Same, the splines must be equal or they wouldn't fit. It's the bar diameter that changes and the hollow ones will be even bigger to compensate for the hollow bar.