Lowering question

[mr. fix it]

The fronts are torsion bars.. it's a matter of turning the load screw out to lower the car..

You would need to surce out stiffer torsion bars and give it a try..

 

[commando1]

Have you even crawled underneath your own car yet??
What springs???
Bagging??? A newbie came in once going yadda yadda yadda about bagging it and I said it was almost impossible.. Guess what....
Stiffer Torsion bars won't help. You will still be only decompressing them in the down direction which will still result in bottoming out.
The torsion bars HAVE to be set at mid torsional compression which the engineers engineed to be at normal riding height which is the only way to get correct wheel travel in both directions.
Please stop trying lowride it. You picked the wrong car.

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[bluefury361]

please stop trying lowride it. You picked the wrong car.

x2 ...................

 

[bluefury361]

Why couldn't you take two inches out of the front springs?

Yeah ....... Let us know how that turns out..... :sFun_doh2:

 

[BJS racing]

Yeah ....... Let us know how that turns out..... :sFun_doh2:

Hey that would lower the car. Right to the stops! :laughing4:

 

[Stormer]

Maybe somebody wants to offer some helpful advice rather than criticism and admonitions as to what somebody should do with HIS own car to keep it in line with YOUR taste. Man that pisses me off.

 

[mopar_4life]

Commando,

Your Right!! :Groaner: No Springs. I work regularly different cars and sometimes they just blend together.

I was only mentioning air bags because I am new to the forum and haven't gone all the old posts yet. Thanks for noticing.

Also, I was pretty excited to find this forum the other day and I wanted to join and learn from it right away. I wanted to join to meet other C body folks and have friendly discussions. NOT to get my head ripped off at my first mistake and then to be asked " Have you even crawled underneath yet?" It is simply unacceptable and ignorant. I would of realised my mistake by reading Mr. Fixit's post above yours. There is no reason for this behavior. I have had to deal with this type of behavior on other fourms and I simply left the forum. Since I don't know of any other C-body forums I'm going to stay for now.

Now that I am off my rant, I don't want to make enemies on here so I apologize if this offended you. Your response sure offended me and I thought you should know why I am here.

Thanks
Eric

 

[commando1]

You passed the first hurdle, Eric. Again, welcome, and we can move on now.

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[BJS racing]

Eric, Sorry buddy wasn't trying to ruffle feathers. The only real way to lower them more than an inch or so with out major changes is to lower the adjustment on the LCA on these cars. The LCA gets to be very close to the frame and the stops after that. More you would need to make major frame mods and it still wouldn't be very easy.

 

[mopar_4life]

BJS

I have no interest in lowering my car. I was just throwing some ideas out to help the original poster. But it is always good to learn about what can/can't/shouldnt be done.

Thanks
Eric

 

[67Monaco]

Commando,

Your Right!! :Groaner: No Springs. I work regularly different cars and sometimes they just blend together.

I was only mentioning air bags because I am new to the forum and haven't gone all the old posts yet. Thanks for noticing.

Also, I was pretty excited to find this forum the other day and I wanted to join and learn from it right away. I wanted to join to meet other C body folks and have friendly discussions. NOT to get my head ripped off at my first mistake and then to be asked " Have you even crawled underneath yet?" It is simply unacceptable and ignorant. I would of realised my mistake by reading Mr. Fixit's post above yours. There is no reason for this behavior. I have had to deal with this type of behavior on other fourms and I simply left the forum. Since I don't know of any other C-body forums I'm going to stay for now.

Now that I am off my rant, I don't want to make enemies on here so I apologize if this offended you. Your response sure offended me and I thought you should know why I am here.

Thanks
Eric

He do tend to do that to newbies. Or folks that don't agree his way of thinking... he's mostly harmless.

Torsion bars can be clocked or if you want to invest in a custom solution, torsion bar adjustment blades that can be clocked so ride height is lower but still in the correct spring rate range.

Anything is possible for the right amount of money. All depends on what you wanna spend.

 

[bajajoaquin]

.....
Stiffer Torsion bars won't help. You will still be only decompressing them in the down direction which will still result in bottoming out.
The torsion bars HAVE to be set at mid torsional compression which the engineers engineed to be at normal riding height which is the only way to get correct wheel travel in both directions.
......

Posted via Topify on Android

I didn't say "correct" wheel travel. I just said improved compared to under-cranked stock torsions. I'm not postulating that stiffer bars will cure the issue, just that you wouldn't be compounding the issue with softer springs as well.

 

[commando1]

I'm a pussycat. Ask Stormer.

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[MrMoparCHP]

There are only two ways to lower a car without impacting the handling (not necessarily drive-ability)

1. Dropped spindles and lowering blocks in the rear.
2. Z the frame which was the way it was done in the 50's basically move the frame up. Common in the rear of most lowered trucks.

Short of a total front end swap, that is about it.


Adjusting the ride height with the torsion bard does not change the spring rate, it just changes the relative orientation of the lower control arm. This would be like cutting the top of the spring mount on a coil spring and moving it up without modifying anything else.

This causes a couple things.
1. It puts you closer to the bump stops.
2. The steering geometry was not engineered for this and may invoke a bump steer.

A friend of mine modified both the spindles and lower control arms on his 67 & 68 Barracudas, He lowered the car 2-3" this way and the car is track proven (road course).


Alan

 

[commando1]

Alan, on dropping it with the spindles,
did he remove 2" from above the spindle and add it below the spindle keep in the spacing between the upper and lower control arms the same, or did he simply cut 2" off the upper portion?

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[OneEyed]

I still haven't been underneath my car to see what all is going on in the front, but I do know that my '67 Newport has lowering blocks in the rear. I assume the front is just the torsion bars let loose.

That being said, it is pretty bouncy. But not to the point that it bothers me once you add in the loose steering, huge turning radius, constant smell of gas, vapor lock, etc... I don't drive it very far or for very long so it's not a big deal.

I like the looks of lowered vehicles and I've had lots of compliments on it as well. If I need a nice smooth ride i take the Honda.

 

[MrMoparCHP]

Alan, on dropping it with the spindles,
did he remove 2" from above the spindle and add it below the spindle keep in the spacing between the upper and lower control arms the same, or did he simply cut 2" off the upper portion?

It might be easier with a picture.

On the uppers they chopped the arm down and reattached it, the max is about 2-3"

On the lower it is a little more tricky.
The end of the arm is cut off about 2" from the center of the ball joint socket through both side plates and the cast iron piece, this is outside the spot where the strut mounts.
A plate is then added to cap the end of the arm and the cut off piece reattached with the same offset as was removed.
I do not recall if there were any other reinforcements done.

This is from a verbal description of what was done.

I will email him and see if I can get a picture of the arm.


Alan

 

[bajajoaquin]

There are only two ways to lower a car without impacting the handling (not necessarily drive-ability)

1. Dropped spindles and lowering blocks in the rear.
2. Z the frame which was the way it was done in the 50's basically move the frame up. Common in the rear of most lowered trucks.

Short of a total front end swap, that is about it.


Adjusting the ride height with the torsion bard does not change the spring rate, it just changes the relative orientation of the lower control arm. This would be like cutting the top of the spring mount on a coil spring and moving it up without modifying anything else.

This causes a couple things.
1. It puts you closer to the bump stops.
2. The steering geometry was not engineered for this and may invoke a bump steer.

A friend of mine modified both the spindles and lower control arms on his 67 & 68 Barracudas, He lowered the car 2-3" this way and the car is track proven (road course).


Alan

It would be different from cutting the top of the spring on a coil spring car because of the way the adjuster works on the spring. Cutting the top of a coil spring car would probably be even worse.

When you crank on the torsion bar adjusters, you push on a lever that acts on the front of the bar. As you load the spring more, the ride height increases. But this is a byproduct of pre-loading the spring. It is not the same as a proper ride-height adjuster that actually changes the pivot independent of spring load. This is why the ride is so poor when lowered. There is less preload on the spring, making it softer, as well as the geometry issues.

A torsion bar is a linear spring rate. So if you have a 200 lb spring, you will need 200 lb to move the first inch, then 400 for the second, 600 for the third, etc.

For the sake of argument, let's assume a 200 lb spring and a ride height with 3" of compressed spring as factory stock. In order to compress the front wheels 1", you would need an additional force of 800 lb. if you lowered the car by 1" from stock by reducing the preload, you would only need 600 lb of force to get that next inch of travel.

So, regardless of geometry issues, the ride sucks. It wallows and bounces and hits $hit more than it should just by being low.

I believe this to be true from looking at how the front end is put together and from my experience with motorcycles which also frequently have preload adjusters. I know about ride quality because my car sat about 2" low when I bought it. (I also know there is no major geometry issue at that height having experienced it.)

If you just look at this as a geometry/wheel travel issue, you are missing the last third of the equation, which is effective spring rate.

 

[MrMoparCHP]

I didn't say cut the coil, I said cut the coil mount and relocate it, cutting a coil is the same as cutting a torsion bar shorter.

Adjusting the torsion bar does NOT change the spring rate only the relative position of the arm to it.
The reason cars behave badly when lowered is that to geometry was not designed for the car to be lowered this way.
The wheels do not remain on the same vertical axis as the suspension travels because of the different lengths of the control arms.
Now mix that with the steering with a torsion bar lowered car is asking for trouble.

The only way to change the spring rate is to change the length of the spring or the diameter (as it applies to torsion bars (or coils)).


Alan

 

[jippek]

What is the correct height? The FSM specifications are like this, is that denotion 1 foot and 3/8 inches? it says inches, but 1-3/8 inches sounds low... on the other page it shows 2 places to measure, A and B and of course in the specs it does not refer to those.