lowering front end

sking · sking's Garage

i know there is a little screw that you are supposed to turn to lower the front,but what is the name of the screw and how many turns does it usally take to get it from stock to the tires being half way in the fenders?
thanks shawn

URY914 · URY914's Garage

It is not really a "little screw". It is a bolt, but not a standard bolt head. Viewing the A-arm from the bottom it is at the 90 drgree angle or the rear inside corner of the suspension A-arm. You loosen the bolt to lower the car but you need to jack up the corner to take the weight off that torsion bar. Lower the car, roll it a few feet so the torsion bar loads up with the weight of the car than measure the lip to ground distance. Do this several times to get it where you want it than do the other side. You'll need steering rack spacers and an alinement when you're done.
Not as simple as turning a little screw.

SummerSledSix · 03-17-2002, 07:20 PM

Been tweaking on mine lately, and discovered roughly 2.5 turns was worth a half inch (that would be about 13mm). Note however, this depends a lot on where in the screw travel you started at, it's not constant through the range. Like URY sez, you will need an alignment when you're done, get a corner balance while you're at it too. Changing the ride height will alter your toe-in at least, if not camber as well.

piperpilotduane · 03-18-2002, 05:35 AM

Remember lowering the front throws off you corner balance. Be shure to lower the rear the same, and have aligment / corner balance done. Nothing like driveing a sports car with the rear jacked up. Cornering gets interesting. Good Luck!

Kevin Powers · 03-18-2002, 07:32 PM

a neat trick a guy showed me was to use the points on the wheel well edge where it meets the rocker panel as your measuring demension. a framing square on a cncrete floor works great. takes a bit of patience ot get all four corners equal. make sure the tank is full of gas and that the spare is in the trunk. bounce the front end every time you make an adjustment.i taught my wife how to measure so that i could sit in the car, to really corner balance it.good wife.

piperpilotduane · 03-19-2002, 05:58 AM

If your wife won't help you get bags of play sand equal to your weight and sit them on the drivers seat.

I hope she will help, but when I bought the third porsche she refuses to come into my workshop without a hard hat! Yeah I'll clean up right after I finish this. But then I move on to the next porsche. Good Luck.

SummerSledSix · 03-19-2002, 10:08 AM

I thought corner balancing was about weight equalization, not ride height equalization. How good an approximation to weight equalization is ride height equalization? How level does your garage floor have to be when you're out there measuring?

URY914 · URY914's Garage

When you adjust the ride height by jacking the springs or torsion bars you are effecting the weight on each corner.

Dave at Pelican Parts · Dave at Pelican Parts's Garage

Exactly.

Also, for any alignment or weight or ride height manipulation, you want the floor to be as level as possible.

Tip: Pick up some cheap floor tiles. That can let you raise up part of the floor by an arbitrary amount. A spirit level (AKA vinyl tubing, water, and food coloring) will let you know what "level" is, and then you can mark the floor with how many tiles you have to stack there to get to "level".

--DD