On Thu, 26 Dec 2002, Vink, Graham wrote:
> I was under the impression that the main reason for installing aluminum
> spacers was to compensate for sagging springs. Are yours sagging (ie, viewed
> from the rear of the car, do the tops of the wheels appear to lean inward?)
They spacers are for various maladies, sagging springs is one. Another is
very short springs with insane spring rates (like 600 pounds/in.) My case
is the latter. With my racing springs installed, the car literally sat
less than 1/4" from the upper bump stop (the frame was 2.5 inches from the
ground!).
Regarding camber adjustment, gross camber adjustment is accomplished by
mixing/matching the trailing arm pivot brackets (there are three styles,
one, two and three notches) and the orientation of same. Using the
brackets, you get about 11.5 degrees of total camber change (from the
least camber change to the most). You can then change the camber a tad by
adding spacers under the springs.
If you have a lot of negative camber (tops are in more than the bottoms),
you should be looking at playing with the brackets.
If your springs are shot, def. get some new springs before you play with
the camber and ride height. And def. get a 4-wheel alignment when you are
done playing.
> If they are sagging, the spacers would help. If they're not sagging, I
> wonder if the car wouldn't have a strange, "jacked up" look?
Well, my race car is not jacked up - I started with rear springs that are
a good 1.5 inches shorter than the stock springs unladen.
But there are certain uprated springs out there that are about the same
free length as the stock spring only with a higher spring rate - these
springs will jack up the car a bit, and if you toss in stiffer spring pads
to the equation, the car will sit higher than stock - too high IMHO.
The other stuff the Graham offered seems reasonable.
regards,
rml
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