Thursday, May 28, 2009

The Low Down On Lowering


When I assembled the car, I had noticed that the front was a little too high. The distance from floor to the top of wheelwell in the rear was 25.5" and 26" in the front. So I set about removing the springs to cut them down a bit.


The springs are 620 one-inch drop springs from Mustangs Plus. They are about 12" tall and IIRC are rated at 560lbs, which is actually pretty high. I had a local shop cut them down with a cutting wheel. There was no way I could hacksaw or jigsaw through these things. I had only 1/3 of a coil removed.



While the coil was out, I replaced the old rubber spring perch bushings with a set of polyurethane bushings. I greased the pivot shaft and the perch rocks back and forth smoothly now. The roller bearing spring perches are popular, but since my perches were in nice shape and just needed new bushings I went this way. I can feel a big difference driving the car now, as the perch allows the upper control arm to move freely.



Here's the coil and perch installed. I had to use an internal coil spring compressor with approximately six inches of steel spacers on top of the threaded rod to fit these short springs. I borrowed the compressor from Advanced Auto, but ended up buying it since it worked well enough for me. The previous owner had installed a set of Edelbrock Performer IAS shocks (Edelbrock 33237 Classic IAS Front Shock Absorber) a couple years ago, so I left them in. This is a good shot of the Baer Racing 12" brakes too.





Amazingly the front now sits at a perfect 25.25" after driving a couple miles to get the springs settled.



Mentioned in this post:



1 comment:

  1. Nice work! It really gets me excited to drive a car just like yours.

    ReplyDelete