(Pic) How adjustable are our front ends?
 

My car is pretty low...too low. The tires tuck up inside the fender. I'd like to raise it 1/2" to 1". Are the adjustments incremental and how much can you raise the car at a time?

http://home.earthlink.net/~rolexwatc...rsche/20_3.jpg

Sure. What suspension do you have? Jack up a corner and see where the adjusting collar is on the threads.

That's an "updated" earlier, torsion bar suspension car, right?

In that case, it is essentially infinately adjustable and incremental. You could raise it another 8 inches if you wanted to, in .01mm increments.

Sorry for the lack of information. Under its' skin, this car is a bone-stock '79 SC. Not sure what suspension I have...

Yes, that's a torsion bar suspension car.

The front end can be raised in whatever increments you would like. It's adjusted by turning a screw/bolt. So in that sense the increment adjustments are "infinite."

You may be able to raise it 1/2 to 1 inch by simply turning the torsion bar adjusting screws, depending on how the adjustment end caps are currently set.

At worse, you'd have to pull and "reindex" the torsion bar end adjusting caps. Not a bit deal.

So...will I hurt anything (other than my ride quality) by cranking up the screws to see if I can get my 1/2"?

You'll probably get a bit of disagreement on this, but IMO, no.

Technically, you could probably use an alignment after changing the ride height. IMO, 1/2 inch isn't going to matter.

Before you do anything, measure your current heights on both sides. If for whatever reason you change your mind, you can reset it to where it is now.

You can also count the turns that you do on each screw, so you can reset it to where it was.

The screws/bolts are 11 mm, BTW.

If they are hard to turn, jack up the front end. For some reason, they are sometimes very easy to turn with the car on the ground, sometimes you need to jack it up.

I just did this the other night, it seems that 1 full rotation of the adjuster screw/bolt equals around 1/4 inch of height adjustment. To raise the car, you want to turn the bolt/screw so that the adjustment arm moves *downward*. I believe that means you turn the bolt/screw counterclockwise.

(BTW, your ride quality will improve if you raise it 1/2 inch, IMO).

OK. Sounds like a plan.

Thanks,

D. Ocean

Danny,
That's a beautiful car!!! Enjoy! If I was in San Diego, I'd be driving around LaJolla all the time!!

It's fairly easy to do. I had a tire rub during a DE after getting suspension work done. I reached under the car and turned the adjusting bolt in a couple of turns. If you raise your front end I would get the alignment checked.

Thanks. Car is in FLA. I used to live in La Jolla.

Danny,

Oops! Well, florida isn't bad, either! I'm going to try to drive the car today but it's 41 degrees and cloudy...no snow or salt on the roads, so what the heck!

It's hot & muggy here...gonna rain on X-Mas. No driving for me.

Danny:
I think some of the info given is wrong.
To raise your front, you need to turn the adjustment screw CLOCKWISE.
Squirt a little engine oil on the threads and the contact point of the screw.
Socket size is 11mm and it helps if you take the weight off the front end.
1 turn CW will raise the front about 1/4".
Use oil; count the turns and do both sides equally.
Depending where your torsion bar retaining cap sits, you may have to re-index the front torsion bar to gain the extra adjustment.
Take a look at the picture in the Bentley SC Repair Manual:
Is your retaining cap in the middle range of adjustment like the picture?

is the 11mm bolt just on the front of the torsion bar tube or is there also an adjustment bolt on the back (back by steering rack) as well. I suppose I should do a search for some pics but if anyone has a pic handy it would be appreciated. I need to lower my front end slightly.

Danny, just another hint. Before you adjust the front, you may want to mark one face of the adjusting bolt and the body of the adjuster with paint or grease pencil to make counting of the bolt turns easier. I also noted that if the car has been corner balanced, the adjusting bolts may not be equally extending from the adjuster body, so one side may have more "adjustability" than the other. Don't know if raising just 1/2 to 1
inch will significantly affect balance, but alignment is another story, as mentioned above.
Larry

On the back. Nothing on the front. I don't see how anyone can make the adjustment with the car on the ground, especially if it's lowered. Long, long skinny arms, I guess.

To reindex the car, remove the 11mm bolt entirely and pull the cao off towards the rear. Rotate it one sline and install. From there, the number of turns is lost, so it's trial and error.

Roll the car back and forth at least 10 feet after each adjustment to find the ride height if you lift it with a jack. As I said, unless you have a drive on rack or a pit, it's hard to do lying on the ground.

Nah, unless the car is absolutely slammed, it's easy to reach the bolts. They are right there. The bigger issue is getting them to turn without the car lifted. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. My car is weird, I can easily raise or lower the pass side with it on the ground, it takes almost no effort. The driv side is very difficult to turn without lifting the car. I think that is the norm - you normally need to release some weight to turn them easily.

I mentioned the counting above, in reality, I don't really do it. Well, I do at first, but then I start making so many small adjustments, I stop keeping track. Just measure the fender opening height to give you a starting point, and when you are done, make sure both sides are roughly equal.

And yea, as I'm re-visualizing it, it's clockwise to raise.

Huhh.....?

Unless he wants to go to the Baha, or the Paris to Dakar endurance, 8 inches is silly and would require several re-setting of the end-retaining cap and re-aligning the toe.

Re .01 mm increments you mention; what gives? :confused:
1 mm is 0.040"
0.1 mm = 0.0040" (Valve clearance)
0.01 mm = 0.00040"

Your ".01mm increments" don't make sense.
That's one hundreds of a millimeter; where does that apply? :rolleyes:

The pitch of the adjustment screw is either 0.75mm or 1mm, I forgot.
Re-check your numbers. ;)

He was asking about adjustability. The 8 inch number is just to demonstrate it is highly adjustable. Of course he isn't going to want to raise it 8 inches.

".01mm" is just meant to mean a very small number. Not meant to be literal. As I said in a later post, it's really just about "infinately" adjustable (at least as that term is commonly used for adjustment mechanisms). You could turn the adjuster 1/1000th of a turn, and raise the car some tiny, tiny, unmeasurable amount if you wanted. That's the info he was looking for, he wasn't sure if you could do that, or if, for example, it could only be adjusted in 1/2 inch increments.

No info is better than bad info.
Danny:
Measuring fender lip height is a very rough estimate and requires the car to be on level ground.
Do it right, according to the Manuals.
If the retaining caps on the T-bars don't sit in roughly the same position, something is not right with the set-up and the alignment and corner balance has to be checked.
If the tub is twisted, fender height means nothing.
Fender height is no assurance of corner balance.
If you are not sure about your alignment and corner balance, have it done. ;)
It makes a big difference. :D
If your car has been corner balanced recently, raising the front will not affect balance as long as you turn the adjustment screws on both sides equally,

One more thing:
If your car is on the ground and you are turning the adjustment screw against the weight of the car, the force on both should feel the same.
If on side feels lighter, it means either the car is not on level ground, or is not corner balanced, or both. :)

Fender height is a relative starting point.

Ex. if it is at 24 now and you want to raise the car half an inch, adjust until both sides are at 24.5.

Now you have raised both sides equally.

Corner balance? Yeah, that's nice to have. I'd estimate that the odds that your car has been cornerbalanced is about 1%. It's rarely done on a street car. And yeah, if your car is cornerbalanced, the second you turn that first screw any amount, your cornerbalance is shot.

If your goal is to just raise the front end of the car 1/2 an inch, you don't need to make it so complicated. Just raise it 1/2 inch equally on both sides.

I normally adjust this with the car on the ground. I place two squares of thin sheet metal with grease between them under each front tire. This allows the tire to "slide" with the adjustment. When you raise it, it will affect toe slightly in proportion to the amount of adjustment. 1/2" will probably not require much adjustment to any other alignment settings.

Well...y'all are on the money. Two full turns clockwise and raised the (fender lip) height 1/2"...start: 24 1/4" end: 24 3/4"

Thanks!

Did you make the adjustments with the car on the ground or on jack stands? Weight on or off the wheels? Thanks

I had pulled the wheels to do some maintenance...painted the struts, calipers, cleaned the brake dust from the inside of the wheels, installed new "long" lug-nuts...

My car is so low, there's not enough room to stick your arm underneath. Oddly, though, with the wheels off the ground, the passenger side bolt was easy to turn while the driver's side was difficult...?

Danny:
The adjuster screws may be rusted, use some penetrating oil.
I would be very interested in seeing pictures of both adjuster-positions.


Also: Do you have the "bump steer kit" installed meaning:
12mm (1/2") round spacers under the steering rack?
One on each side.
It reduces bump steer; nice to have. :)

Congrats. Glad all the useless "bad info" turned out helpful for you.

Yup, my car is the same. These are old cars.

I soaked with AeroKroil 1/2 hr. before attempting adjustment. It seems the one side had more tension on it. Before wrenching, I observed the adjusters were cranked as low as they could go while still remaining in contact with the torsion bar.

No bump-steer kit, yet. Previous owner did a lot of stuff for "looks" but not for "go" or handling. I'm correcting all that now.

After seeing this thread I thought I would lower my front end 1/4" just for looks. Did everything as suggested but ran into a snag. My adjustment bolts are already screwed all the way out, meaning the car is as low as it can go. The bolts are at a really bad angle against the T-Bar end cap stop button thingy. The end cap needs to be re-indexed but will not budge.

How do you get the T-Bar cap off?

Also - my drivers side adjustment bolt was much harder to turn than the passengers side with no weight on the wheels. I'd say rust is the culprit.

Brian-
Get the front end up in the air to remove tension from the adjustment cap, remove the adjustment screw/bolt completely, and the cap should come off with a little bit of effort.

"My car is so low, there's not enough room to stick your arm underneath. "

Roll the front wheels over a couple of 2x12s or equivalent on each side. With this setup, even Popeye should be able to slide his brachioradialis under your car. After each adjustment roll the car and settle the suspension (unless you use slip plates), then recheck the ride height. Repeat until it's at the desired height.

Sherwood

Jon - I did that, they won't budge.

Hmmmm...try a small pry bar on the cap, or you could remove the covers and end caps on the front of the a-arms and tap the T-bars forward to release them.

Are you lowering past the sanity level? :D
Tension, or rust is holding the caps on.
Look at page 401-10 in the Bentley, the cap comes off with some prying and tapping unless there is still some tension exerted on the T-bar end-cap. Push down on the A-arm to release tension and get the cap off.
Mark the ends of the T-bars if they don't have markings; they need to go back in in the same direction.
Pull the T-bars right out and inspect them, sometimes they need to be repainted. There is a left and right.
If they are good, grease the splines and put them back in.
Re-index the cap one spline, grease and re-assemble, oil the adjustment screw, (You may have to play with the A-arm up or down to get the screw in)
Adjust the screw so the tongue of the cap sits in the center.
Set the car on its wheels. Happy with the height?
If not, now you can just turn the adjustment screws ccw to lower some more. What fender height are you aiming for?

Of course, with all this lowering for more bling, there is no zing in the performance. :rolleyes:

Even with the bump-steer spacers, the handling is *****ty, the tires wear on the inside edge, you'll need another alignment and corner balance, and most likely, you'll bottom out the front struts during hard cornering.

So much for bling. :( Why do it? :confused:

Lowering the car 1/4" should not cause all those problems. It sits at Euro hieght right now, the alignment is perfect and the tires wear evenly.
What I want to do is re-index the caps so that the screws are about 1/2 way in and sitting at a correct angle (none) to the bump stop. Right now they are screwed out all the way and at a sever angle with the stop. The alignment shop must have done that years ago when the car was first put together. I have never messed with the ride hieght until now. The taller wheels and tires have exposed a 1/4" gap in the front that was not noticable before. I know it's hard to believe but some of us do not regularly track our 911s and like for them to look good.

http://www.autosalon-singen.de/porsc...1_03_04_05.jpg



http://home.earthlink.net/~rolexwatches/photos/75_3.jpg

SmileWavy

Brian:
Did you get the caps off as suggested?
I agree that, if the car was aligned to Euro heights, lowering it 1/4" in the front should be o.k.
Do you see spacers under the rack?
And yes, you'll be able to get the height you want and have the screws just about in the middle.

On a side-note, some people had problems with the 915 transmission when adding a lot of power, i.e., rdane split the 2nd gear far away from home.
Porsche changed to the G50 already in 1987 with the 3.2 liters, and certainly for the 3.6 and up.


Danny:
Those aftermarket scoops for the rear are sooo cool :rolleyes:
How about mud-flaps, a roof rack and angora-wool steering wheel cover. :D
Are those rivet-add-ons plastic or steel?

Happy NY, guys. SmileWavy

Thank you! Most people like them as well, so you also have good taste. They're functional, too...

The flares are fiberglas for a reason. If you crunch them on the track, it's easy to slap on a new one. If they were metal and folded into your wheelwell, your day is over.

I've not been back out to fiddle with the car just yet. I figured those adjustment screws have been all the way out for the better part of a decade, they can surely wait another day. Ha!

I've got a GT2 wing with functional side air rams on my car as well. They work great. I also have some home-built black mudflaps behind the front wheels. Can't hardly see them and they help save my paint.