Front ride height adjustment: adjusting screws loose and car stiil too high

[Vincent 911]

This weekend I worked a lot on my SC: new shocks, rebuilt calipers and turbo tie rods upgrade. It worked great.
My SC front ride height is too high: almost 5 inches gap between the top of the tire and the bottom of the fender. Therefore I want to lower he car.

I did loosed the two adjusting screws but the car is still too high. Actually both adjusting screws are 100% loosed.

Do I need to remove the torsion bar adjustment levers in rotate them or do I need to removed the torsion bars themselves?

Thank you.

Vince

[Danny_Ocean]

Did you take it for a cruise after adjusting?

[don911]

There's only so much adjustment in the cap. If you installed the caps with the suspension at full droop, there won't be enough adjustment in the screw. You need to compress the suspension and then install the cap.

[boyt911sc]

Originally Posted by Vincent 911

This weekend I worked a lot on my SC: new shocks, rebuilt calipers and turbo tie rods upgrade. It worked great.
My SC front ride height is too high: almost 5 inches gap between the top of the tire and the bottom of the fender. Therefore I want to lower he car.

I did loosed the two adjusting screws but the car is still too high. Actually both adjusting screws are 100% loosed.

Do I need to remove the torsion bar adjustment levers in rotate them or do I need to removed the torsion bars themselves?

Thank you.

Vince

Vince,

No need to remove the TB's. Simply remove the TB retaining cap with adjusting bolt and re-install it (re-index) to produce the desired ride height. If you're running out of adjustment (lowering), remove TB retaining cap/s and re-index cap/s. For Driver side: more counter-clockwise than previous setting. For Passenger side: more clockwise setting. Fine adjustment done with the adjusting bolts. Drive car and allow the new setting to settle down before doing another adjustment. HTH.

Tony

[dbrisson]

With minimal load the caps com off easy. I made sure to pull the caps and also set the cpas so the final height was close to mid way on both sides.

[dipso]

Are you sure you have loosened the right screws. There should always be weight on them as the car is lowered or raised. They should never be loose.
If you mean they are backed out and a gap above them then that makes sense. I have adjusted mine several times and never ran across them being loose.

[Gunter]

Originally Posted by boyt911sc

Vince,

No need to remove the TB's. Simply remove the TB retaining cap with adjusting bolt and re-install it (re-index) to produce the desired ride height. If you're running out of adjustment (lowering), remove TB retaining cap/s and re-index cap/s. For Driver side: more counter-clockwise than previous setting. For Passenger side: more clockwise setting. Fine adjustment done with the adjusting bolts. Drive car and allow the new setting to settle down before doing another adjustment. HTH.

Tony

+1
Jack the car up for minimal load on the caps.
Try to re-index the TB retainers so they end up in the middle of the adjusting-range after you get the desired ride height.

[burgermeister]

When you get back to adjusting (after re-indexing), +1 on going for a drive. At least roll the car back and forth a bit & bounce it as well - the height changes a surprising amount after a drive (at least mine did).

[Vincent 911]

I re-index the caps yesterday and it looks great now!
The caps were a little bit rusty: I slighlty hammer through a small opening on the alluminium cross bar.

Thank you.

[Vincent 911]

I re-indexed the caps yesterday and it looks great now!
The caps were a little bit rusty: I slightly hammered them through a small opening on the aluminum cross bar.

Thank you.

[rnln]

Vincent,
Do you know by re-indexing the cap let say... 1 click, how much does it change to the way t he car sit?

[Vincent 911]

Originally Posted by rnln

Vincent,
Do you know by re-indexing the cap let say... 1 click, how much does it change to the way t he car sit?

I would say 50 to 70 mm (2 to 3 inches). I don't know if my torsion bars are stock.

[88911coupe]

When you say rotating the torsion bar cap "clockwise" to lower the ride height am I correct in thinking this is from the perspective of being behind the cap, looking towards the front of the car? For some reason I can't seem to lower the ride height and all I did was take the A Arm off. I carefully counted the threads on the adjusting screw (8 at top) but with 8 threads exposed the ride height is not about 2 inches(!) high. I can't seem to get it to drop. The other issue is I can't seem to get tension off of the cap to remove it to rotate it. Very frustrating.

[boyt911sc]

Originally Posted by 88911coupe

When you say rotating the torsion bar cap "clockwise" to lower the ride height am I correct in thinking this is from the perspective of being behind the cap, looking towards the front of the car? For some reason I can't seem to lower the ride height and all I did was take the A Arm off. I carefully counted the threads on the adjusting screw (8 at top) but with 8 threads exposed the ride height is not about 2 inches(!) high. I can't seem to get it to drop. The other issue is I can't seem to get tension off of the cap to remove it to rotate it. Very frustrating.

Buck,

Look it this way @ driverside front TB cap: If the TB cap is in the middle position, re-indexing (removing) it CCW will reduce or lower the ride height and vise versa. Looking at the passenger side: Re-indexing the TB cap CW will reduce or lower the ride height. For both cases the front torsion bars are kept stationary and adjusting bolts not altered. Just moving the TB caps in either directions will effect the ride height. The cap bolt is used for small increment adjustment (up or down). If the adjusting bolt goes up, the ride height increases and vise versa.



The above picture illustrates the passenger side at almost max adjustment for increasing the ride height. To increase the ride height more, you need to pull the cap and re-index CCW and turning the adjuster bolt out. However, if you need to lower the ride height (using above picture), all you have to do it turn the bolt out or down.

BTW, you need to jack the car up slightly to release the weight on the suspension. The adjuster bolt must be free from any load to get the cap out easily. Otherwise, there would some resistance (load). HTH.

Tony

[88911coupe]

Thanks for the explanation...I just need to go back in there and figure out why the cap sees to be under pressure and not removable. I've removed the adj. screw and moved the arm up and down but it seems wedged in there tight!

[pete3799]

Originally Posted by 88911coupe

Thanks for the explanation...I just need to go back in there and figure out why the cap sees to be under pressure and not removable. I've removed the adj. screw and moved the arm up and down but it seems wedged in there tight!

Mine were stuck also. Just pull the whole T bar out, clamp it in a vise and rap the cap off.

[Gunter]

Good stuff.

If you pull the T-bars, put grease on the splines and make sure the adjuster screw threads are lubed.

[88911coupe]

OK, just to wrap up my issue. I jacked up the front and unscrewed the driver side adj. bolt and then removed the cap...for some reason it came off easily tonight. I dropped it down the next set of threads which ended up being about 8 o'clock if that make sense. What had me confused was reading a section in Wayne's 101 book that talked about starting it at the highest point. It did not apply to my situation for some point.

[88911coupe]

Just to clarify, I'd had the whole a arm off and was planning to be doing the bushings. Turns out they were not in too bad a shape and decided to put them back which is when I ran into the problems. I'd read one of Wayne's projects and it indicated but the tab at the height then thread the bolt. That ended up with the front looking like it was set up for the Paris Dakar rally! In reading some other posts it suggested putting the adj. cap on at about 4 o'clock for the driver's side as a starting point. Worked like a charm. No idea why that adj. cap was seemingly wedged in there tight last night and popped right off tonight.