No life (a.k.a. DattoMaster)  
Joined:
2008/10/10 22:02
From Melbourne Australia (and likely under the car)
Group:
Registered Users
|
Most of the answers would be 'it depends' - if you want to do it properly and safe (which is the only way worth talkin about - no kidding!) - allright - to raise you'll need new springs at the front, and be prepared it will alter wheel alignment and likely in a bad way (wearing out the outside shoulder of the front tyre treads would be my bet).
If it's leaf sprung rear, you can get the leaves re-set, and possibly add one more leaf to the pack (whiich will make the rear end twitchier, esp in the wet, as will raising it, so you have a double whammy of danger). That'll only give you a couple of inches before you start running into trouble with shocks reaching the end of their extension.
Lowering it, you 'could' cut the front springs (but I _absolutely_ don't recommend that) - which will drop it a good couple of inches, and also make for a much higher spring rate (since hte softness or hardness of a spring in terms of how to compress it is a combination of how thick the spring coil material is, and how many coils or loops are in there it'll start lower and likely bottom out easier, but the actual spring rate itself would be higher. Worse still, if you cut too far, when you jack up the car, the spring might not extend long enough to stay in place, and can flop around. this could come out or jam/skew if the wheels come off the ground on rough road or if you go airborne over a crest, and if that happens, when you 'land' you'll almost certainly veer uncontrollably off the road and or into something.
On the back you can use lowering blocks or re-set springs. Be aware that if you lower it to the point that the axle centreline is higher than the front spring eyehole (or roughly the front lowercontrol arm bush centreline on 4 link rear ends - roughly - I won't complicate this with the full mate/points of intersection etc) then when you accelerate it tries to unload the weight on the drive wheels and can lead to wheel hop and general instability under full throttle (esp coming out of a turn).
In other words, generally going more that a couple of inches higher or lower than stock is a bad idea (and I haven't even mentioned the damage that can be done bottoming out shockers/suspension components when too low.
Generally the accepted minimum lowest is that an object that is 4 inches or 10cm high should be able to be driven over (obviously not by the wheels/tyres) and nothing on the car should hit it. A coke can is about that measurement, so that sounds pretty much on the money. A lot of trolley jacks aren't far off that either, so if they don't fit it's also a giveaway.
Some of the above sounds like 'the sky is falling in' and it's not meant to be, it's just a (very brief and simplified) overview of some of the risks - and it's important to get them 'out there' because whilst you'll get good advice here and a few other forums, you'll find no shortage of idiots elsewhere who will just blindly say 'cut the springs' without even knowing about the fact that they might drop out (some don't mind you, but you have to check or find someone else who has done it to the exact same model and know for sure) - the same tools who would say 'it's all good bro' will be nowhere to be found if their advice ends up hospitalising you or someone else :)
Posted on: 2009/1/18 5:46
|
Transfer
