socalman

Posted this in C5 tech as well, but you guys are also very knowledgable in suspensions. I'm looking to lower the ride and get a decent ride out of Bilstien sports (which, by the way, are not any different than a stock shock in overall size, length or travel- the socalled '1" shorter' or 'made for lowered Vettes' is total BS.

I'm wondering if I could remove the bump stops, making the shock go from a 3" travel to almost 5", putting the lowered car closer to the center of the travel. More info here...

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c5-t...post1573973820

mgarfias

If you pull out the bump stops, what happens when you hit a major bump and the damper bottoms out on the internals? Or worse, what happens when you're in a hard corner and your outside rear hits a major bump and the damper compresses and has a hard stop instead of a progressive stop?

ryan0

those two things don't go together with OEM stuff.

Kubs

I would leave the bump stops in. They are there for a reason. If you dont damage the car when hitting a bump, in a corner it will upset the car and cause a spinout or off track experience like what mgarfias was getting at.

fej

Lowered to the max on stock bolts helps minimize the wheel well gap while not adversely affecting the handling/ride very much. Maintaining the correct rake is important, and like others have mentioned removing the bump stops is not a good idea. Some people cut them some, but I have no personal experience with this.

If you want to lower the car and are worried about the ride quality, get a set of pfadt sport shocks and talk to them about where to run them for ride quality for street use, but that is probably near full soft.

That all being said, there are a ton of vettes riding around with longer rear bolts and removed front spring bushings to get the car down below what the factory allows. This definitely makes the car handle worse, some may say makes it unsafe at speed. But it can be done, just understand what you are doing and make your own decisions.

You will be getting the "driver" impressions from this subforum, and not the waxer type that is concerned more about looks.

G'luck
Fej

vette6aut0x

What you might want to do is call LG. They make a drop spindle and it doesn't affect the geometry.

steponc

MSI is another supporting vendor that has drop spindle uprights. This lowers the car 1" without changing the geometry of the control arms. That means you regain your intended travel.
I have them on my A-X car with QA-1 double adjustable coilovers. What a difference.

0Randy@DRM

The Bilstein shock bodies are smaller by a 1/2 inch and the rod itself is also smaller by about a 1/2 inch. Hence the 1 inch shorter shock.

You get the car aligned after the lower-shock install???

Randy

socalman

I get what you're saying. I understand there are aftermarket stops that are shorter? or it can be cut, (the top and bottom, leaving the hour glass design in place for progression)

I agree, on stock bolts, all works pretty good. The Pfadts are still not a shorter shock, in fact, nobody makes a 'shorter' shock (not talking $2k coilovers)

No doubt this is the correct way to do it, but they're over $3k, and with coilovers, talking $5k. Seems there needs to be a shorter shock available which would center the travel of the shock, along with a stronger spring (which I'm learning that maybe switching to a Z06 spring may help)

You might be surprised to find that is not correct. The mount to mount is identical and so is the travel (maybe 1/8" more on Bilstein). I personally measured this, the call Bilstein to confirm. The Sport shock is "better' for lowered cars, and somewhere, somebody started the rumor they were shorter.

After I get this figured out, I will get aligned and corner balanced.

I'm finding that most of the problem is in the rear, fronts dropped 1" don't seem to have a problem.

The rear aftermarket bolts are too extreme, going from a 4.5" stock bolt max to a 5-3/4" aftermarket minimum gap (bolts are not all threads). Not sure why they made the AM bolts so long.

thehammer69

Even on just stock bolts, I have found lowering all the way to be detrimental to handling.

When I started Autocrossing, I was originally doing it at full OEM ride height. Then I slightly lowered about FOUR turns of the adjuster at each position and everything was still fine. Then I had the Car lowered even more and Corner balanced. Basically the result after this is that the Right front was at maximum lowered and all the other positions were adjusted not too far from being fully lowered as to achieve the Corner Balancing.

Now the average person would think I would have great handling now. Nope, the next 6 months I was "the sucK" at autocrossing. People that I would normally beat were beating me. Other people even noticed and were asking me what was wrong. I then went out and bought some Pfadt shocks, while they helped slightly, I still wasn't back to where I used to be. Finally, I decided to raise the car back up some. Well guess what? Suddenly I was back to my old self and then some.

I am now a firm believer that having your suspension closer to the center of it's travel is MUCH better than having only around 1 inch of travel on your shock shaft before the bumpstop starts touching.

Now, I understand a shorter shock could help in this situation. But I also believe that you then start risking having your tires "crash" into the body of your car at full compression. I have seen the results of this at the Atlanta National Tour a couple years back where one of the ASP competitors had a short shock and the rear tires crunched his rear body panels above the tires.

socalman

I'm maxed on stock bolts, which is still higher than I was. I run my own little autocross (in an empty lot) in a tight circle just to feel the body roll. I am now rolling a little more than I was, maybe because I changed the bump stop from 1-1/2" to 1/2"?

Would a stiffer rear spring help (Z06?) as I have the soggy base set up now. I am using C6z51 sways.

I like the ride height I got out of max plus 1/2" (by cutting the rear bolt bushings 1/4" so the stock bolt acts like a 5" bolt instead of 4.5", but not too long like the aftermarket bolts were. The ride on the freeway is much improved, but I'd like to get a little less roll.

Solofast

About 6 months into running the car I lowered the back all the way on stock bolts. I have a set of shorter 3011 Koni's that were custom made, so they were absolutely not bottoming out and the car still handled like crap. Raised the height back up to about 1 inch lower than stock and the handling came back. There is no question that lowering too much is a bad thing, right now you are too low.

You can dork around with bump stops, but if you don't put the ride height back up to where it should be, the car isn't going to work right.

Don't think about roll angle, look at what the car is doing, if you aren't racing the car and just want to tighten up the handling then get a set of stiffer springs (Z06 would be a good start) and with the proper ride height you will have a good handling car. With the soft springs on the car you are probably into the bump stops more than you know right now. Cutting the bump stops with soft springs and too low a ride height is just going to make the car snap oversteer WHEN (and you notice I didn't say if) you bottom out in the back. The longer bump stops are probably helping you out now.