(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.