Coil-Over shocks are a great option for getting the perfect stance out of your car.
Today let's talk about adjusting them to get that perfect ride height.
Hey, I'm Trevor with QA1 here to talk to you today why coil-overs
are a great option for a performance gain and also being able to adjust our ride height.
So they're unique in their design being that the spring seat is attached to the body of the shock.
The body of the shock is threaded and this allows us to thread the spring seat
up or down the body of the shock which would thus increase or decrease our ride height.
As opposed to an OEM spring which would be fixed in its location
and ride height would be set based upon that fixed spring length. This now gives us the ability to
change our ride height and dial in that perfect stance. So let's discuss the process today about
changing our ride height and how that procedure is done. So I've got this great looking Bel-Air
behind me here. But the back end is sitting a little higher than I'd prefer to see it
so let's highlight the adjustment procedure on how to lower the back end of this car.
Very easy procedure that we can take care of in just a few minutes here. I'll show you how easy
it is. So we want to start by getting the car set down on a level surface first and we also
want to know where our starting ride height is at. So we first want to take a measurement
from the floor through the center line of the axle to the center of the fender. Once we've
got that established we can then set a new ride height goal and make our adjustments accordingly.
Once we've got our goal set we want to raise the car up in the air. I'll do that now and
show you the adjustment procedure. So we want to lower the back of this car about one inch
and on a solid axle suspension like this we know that it's about a one to one ratio for
ride height change for spring seat change. So if you want to lower the back end one inch we need to
lower the spring seat an inch. On most front ends it's about a two to one ratio. So if you want to
lower the front end of an inch then you'll need to change the spring seat height about a half inch.
So let's talk about the ride height adjustment procedure here. We first want to make sure that
we've got anti-seize applied to the threads of the shock this will eliminate potential for galling of
the aluminum to the to the spring seat adjusters. We want to lower our locking collar down
out of the way. This will provide us clearance and access to our main spring seat adjuster. Once
we've got our locking collar out of the way to leave room for our spanner wrench. We'll want to
take one of our spanner wrench options and start making adjustments on the main locking collar.
I like this ratchet style attachment here. I'm just going to hook onto the
indent in the spanner nut and start lowering the spring seat down.
So now that we've got our main spring seat adjusted down where we want it. We now can just
thread our lock nut up against our spring seat. And give this a little snug and they're locked
together. Now it's time to set the car on the ground and check our new ride height. All right
now that we have the ride height adjusted where we want it. It's a good idea to set the car down and
move the car back and forth at least some or even take it for a quick spin up and down the driveway.
This will allow the suspension to settle out and give us a truer picture of where our final ride
height would be. This is especially important on a front end or independent suspension. So now that
we've seen how easy the ride height adjustment procedure is. We've got the car lowered back on
the ground and it's a good time to recheck our ride height on both sides of the car. Make sure
that we've hit the ride height we're looking for which we have. If we haven't we would want
to go back in and adjust accordingly. At this point it's also a good time as well to
check our shock length at this new ride height to make sure we have an adequate amount of travel in
the shock in both directions and also make sure that we're not going to be bottoming out on
the frame to axle clearance or the tire to fender clearance. This would be a good time to double
check all of those clearances at our new ride height point. Any questions on this procedure
please check out our tech page at QA1.net or reach out to our tech line. And now that you've seen how
easy it is to get that perfect stance it's time for you to feel that perfect ride and #goDRIVEit!
I'm Trevor with QA1
You got your name down. I got my name down and QA1