I have been trying to figure out what is wrong with the front right suspension. I have Ground Control coil overs and Tokico 5 way shocks. When I try to adjust the ride height my left side sags when I compensate by adjusting the coil over I almost max out the setting it still sags. The shocks are new so are the coil overs. Could it be a bad spring or a bad shock?

Any Opinions?

 

You have to disconnect the roll-bar when changing the ride heights.

It's entirely possible you have an incorrect spring, I would be surprised if a brand new Eibach ERS spring is bad.

 

Not the shock -- shocks have nothing to do with ride height.

Since you have adjustable coil-overs, you should be able to correct any sag. One corner low? Raise that corner; problem solved.

Please describe what you mean by 'sag' in precise terms. Also describe your adjustment procedure.

-Max

 

pic is worth a thousand words...

 

I will try and take a picture tonight.

When I say sag I mean if I set both coil overs (Left and Right) to the 11th thread on the adjusting collar. The left side is about a 1/4 of an inch + lower than the right (Tire to fender distance). If I raise the left coil over to compensate, say to the maximum thread the result is still lower than the right. (Tire to fender distance).

 

It's easy - it's the stock rubber shock mount at the top of the spring assembly. They frequently sag on the driver's side due to the car primarily having one person in it driving. It's a pretty common problem.

I recommend replacing both front shock mounts when doing suspension work. They're about $60 or so each from Malloy. After I put on my Eibachs, I had PERFECT ride height all the way around - no difference side to side.

Dale

 

Not so easy Dale, he has the GC upper mounts -- he doesn't have the big rubber shock mount anymore.

 

Good basic point about disconnecting the swaybars before setting the weight distribution and ride heights.

The problem could also be related to something in the rear suspension that is not supporting the left side properly. Remember that the total weight on the car's left side (front + rear) is related to the car's left-right weight distribution (CG location) and will not change with spring adjustment. The tilt of the car left-to-right will be the same front and rear (unless the chassis is twisted). If the left rear is sagging, it could cause this problem.

 

An additional tip:

If you don't have scales to determine the weight distribution, a trick to make sure each end of the car is adjusted reasonably well for weight is to jack up the opposite end of the car in the middle (differential housing in the rear, center of front subframe in the front) until the tires at that end are clear of the ground and adjust the coil-overs for the end that is still on the ground until the car is level. Do this for both ends of the car. This separates the effects of front and rear adjustments.

Note:
The swaybars should be disconnected during this procedure. Check when reattaching them that the links line up without a lot of force, or this can throw off your weight and level achieved in the previous steps.

When you let the car down on the ground after this, adjust for the ride height you want by adjusting both sides equally (same on both fronts, same on both rears, may be different front-to-rear) in both the front and the rear.

 

I will try all of these... Thanks

 

One more thing I just thought of on my above post about jacking the car up to set the springs...

If, when you let the car down on the ground and have set the ride height, and it is not level side-to-side due to the car being heavier on one side or the other (swaybars still not connected), you will want to correct the side-to-side tilt by lowering the high side (an equal # of spring-perch turns front and rear), and raising the initially-low side by the same amount.

The final step should be re-attaching the swaybars.

 

20 years later I replaced the ground control tokico setup you had installed with a set of ohlins road and tracks. You had the front springs on the rear and the rear springs on the front. Not sure how I hadn't paid more attention to this sooner myself.

 

This might be the best zombie thread revival I've seen in a while, thanks for following up.