I just had Tokico shocks put on the back (hadnit had time to do the fronts) and the back and one side is an 1 1/4 inch higher. These are not the illumni ajustable. They are the blue ones though. I have an 81. Any one know why one side is higher. Could he have put them on wrong?

 

Not possible to install incorrectly that I know of. Now if one of them is bad, not holding it's charge and the other is good then it would cause this problem.

 

what springs do you have on your car? i have racing beat springs, and ive had the same problem since i got my car. my passenger side sits higher than the drivers side all the time.

 

I have stock springs and mine is also the passenger side. Does yours sit up that much higher?

 

Oh, and how can I test for shock not holding gas?

 

The spring on one side is probably just more worn out than the other.

A shock technically shouldnt affect your ride height, as they dont apply much force back on the car. Considering you can easily compress a shock in your hand, your shock would have to be seriously messed up or your car would have to be impossibly light for it to matter.
Ride height is dependant on your springs, their mounting parts, and the spring seats.

My guess is that the previous owner didnt do much driving with a passanger, and perhaps was a heavy fellow. Ive seen larger people get in cars and the side of the car just drops down considerably. Drive a car around like this on the stock springs for 20 years, and the drivers side is prone to wear out/sag quicker, and therefore sit higher on the passanger side.

If your shock is blown out, Im sure you would notice it being clunky / noisy, or causing other drivability problems. If you havent noticed anything but the height difference and the car feels stable when you drive it, its time for a new set of springs.

 

what about if i dont have stock springs?

 

Well, its possible the rear springs arent seated properly if the height discrepancy is just in the back and has been there since you installed the springs. It is unlikely but even so, you cant rule that possibility out.

If its the front that has the problem, Ive heard this is more common. This is why they make strut top spacers. Sometimes the front needs minor tweaking to sit level.

However, I cant explain why this happens to the front more often than the rear. One wild guess is that one side is a little bit heavier than the other, and to compensate you have to shim it up to level it out. It also could be due to the fact that the front has many more parts that relate to the height of the top spring perch that the rear doesnt have that can wear/ get replaced out of order. Its prety hard to install rear springs improperly in comparison.
Im curious to hear what other people have to say on the subject, I dont seem to remember ever coming across any hard facts as to why it happens.

 

I just had Illuminas and RB springs installed last month, and I didn't notice any difference in height from the rear from looking at it but I haven't measured them.

I did use new rubber tops for the springs in the rear, and they were installed at a shop.

 

Actually a shock can affect height in the rear. Using kyb gr2's verus kyb's gas a just makes approx 1 inch difference in height due to the fact the gas a justs are a higher gas charged shock.

 

i have the same problem with my gsl-se i have rb springs tokico illuminas and brand new rubbers on the top. and this is n the rear, i was wondering if cutting the bump stop would help lower it

 

Same problem here too.

I put a new rear end in....same problem. I swapped the springs from left to right......same problem. Barley used Gsl-se shocks....still the same.

I'm really puzzled. Maybe it's the lower control arm?

 

I also had this issue when I installed new RB springs and Illumina shocks. Driver's side was noticeably higher. Turned out that one of the old rubber bushings was stuck up inside the wheel well. I found it and removed it, then all was well.

 

shocks do not in anyway effect ride hight. It's your springs that do that. You probably have one too many bushings on one side, or left one out on the other side.

 

Sorry, have to disagree based on my statement about gr2's and gas adjusts.

 

I suppose if the bound in the shock is a higher rate than the spring rate then it would effect ride hight, but the stock rear spring rate is 100 lb/in so I doubt it... If your shocks effect your ride hight then your shocks aren't paired tcorrectly to your springs. And, Tokico HP's are not nearly stiff enough to effect ride height unless he got a bad one that was valved way too high. HP's are cheap crap really. Through out many personal experiances they tend to blow after 6 months to a year. We won't even sell them to customers anymore.

 

Is the weight of gas tank more on the driver's side? Just trhowing ideas out there.

 

Nice try but the gas tank is centrally located.. It sounds like if he did not get a bad shock then maybe the springs are not sitting correctly in their perch which is not hard to do...

Hyper, thanks for the heads up on the Hp's, I have never used them on the rear. I once had the old style (Before they called them blues) on the front and they were good. I have always gone back and forth with the Kyb's and had great luck with them.

Heres a link to mazdatrix site for kyb http://mazdatrix.com/h3.htm
They say they raise the rear end by approx 1/2 inch but in my experience it's been atleast a inch...

 

Well, the origanal owner was a big man and maybye thats it. Could the spring get unseated during the changing of the shocks?

 

If when the shocks were installed the vehicle was put on jackstands or done on a hoist where the rearend was unsupported, yes. if not then no...

 

HP's are better than KYB GR2 though. GR2's are stock replacement. NEVER put those in a car with aftermarket springs... GR2's are actually stock equipment in a bunch of cars. Also according to Mazda the engine, transmission, and the gas tank are all left hand bius. So the gas tank is heavier on the left. just get under the car and you can see it's bigger on the left side where the pick up is... And the engine and transmission are not centered in the car the are oriented to the left to offset the weight of the driver in a RHD car. One way we got screwed with LHD cars, but it's easier for us to go turbo w/o having the stearing on the right side.

 

Does not make sense to do it that way? With the possiblity of their just being a Driver in the car wouldn't it make more sense to put the weight off to the right on the gas tank? Then if they did the left side you think they would of made the front coil springs to match that as they did on the old muscle cars that had a option for A/c, the springs were different on that side..

 

Well Mazda did it. Weather it makes sense or not, they ddi it, and those are their reasons. And as I said before they offset to the LEFT because all the cars were orignionally designed RIGHT hand drive. This is one of the reasons Nissan never exported the Skyline LHD. The rack on the left would interfear with the turbos and exhaust and they didn't feel sales would offset redesign and manufactureing costs. Japanese companies use to design to them selves first and mke changes as after thoughts to enter different markets.

 

Oh well. One things for sure, they still handle well....

 

Hey, feel free to ignore my personal experience with this exact situation...