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Lowering car questions

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Old 02-28-2006, 10:02 PM
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Default Lowering car questions

With my car being lowered and the control arms being higher than they were stock, should I shorten my endlinks?
I figure the end of the front control arms are about 2" higher than they were before. Where the endlinks bolt to the front control arm will be somewhere between 1 and 2" taller if I'm remembering where they bolt correctly. (I would measure how far the endlink and end of the control arm are to piviot point to actually figure that out.) So, that puts the end of the sway bars 1" or so higher.
I have the energy suspension endlinks in the front. The spacer they have in the middle could easily be cut shorter and the threads of the bolt go down pretty far too.
So what do you guys think?
As for the rear, the endlinks are shorter if I remember correctly and there is no spacer? Maybe soemthing similar could be done but I'll have to look at it since my memory is failing me.
Old 02-28-2006, 10:34 PM
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The pre-load on the sway bar is critically designed. You don't want that preload to be much less or much more. The best way to determine what needs to be changed is to determine how much it REALLY moved. I'd have a similar car (same suspension FE code) measure the distance from the end of the swaybar to the control arm with the car jacked up, weight off wheels.

Then measure your current condition the same way, and adjust the endlink spacer by that amount.

You don't want more force applied to both sides of the bar at the same time. The bar is designed to provide lateral stability, by transferring the load from one side to the other. Not by taking up load from both sides at all times.

Glad you thought of it. One of the easy things to overlook.
Old 02-28-2006, 11:28 PM
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Bill could you explain how I should measure agian. I'm a little confused.
The way I think your saying it seems like I'll end up with the same numbers. When the car is jacked up the suspension travel is limited to how far the strut will let the spring unload. In both cases it'* the same.
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