Hi All,

I'm working on my 1990 C4 Convertible. I purchased a wedge kit, and proceeded to shave the wedges down, as I was looking for more drop than the advertised up to an inch promise. The rear of the car has the 12” long bolts and it looks great, and rides good. The large gap in the front wheel wells was driving me nuts.
I shaved the wedges, cut off the original rubber spacers and epoxied the new shorter wedges on to the spring. I then did a mock up install of the spring to see how much was needed to be removed from the U bracket. I shortened them to what I thought was proper and put it back in. The wedges were not touching the frame, but were very close. So I sanded the brackets down and repeated the process a few times until the wedges just touch, too the point that I can't fit a feeler gauge between the wedges and the frame. I also had to make spacers because the original bolts didn't have enough threads to tighten down the shortened brackets.
So I install the passenger side and all is well, snug but not tight. I use a transmission jack to raise the spring on the drivers side, and install the bracket and tighten up the bolts, drawing the spring up the rest of the way. Then…..the drivers side bracket snaps in half.
I thought about it, and deduced that I should have trimmed the rubber spring cushion on the bottom of the spring that fits into the concave of the bracket. I got another bracket, went through the bracket cutting and trimming process to get the wedge to contact the frame, trimmed the lower spring cushion on both sides and installed the spring.
The same thing happened again, the bracket broke in half again.
So my question is; “What the hell am I doing wrong?” I am thinking that I need to trim more from the bottom cushion of the spring, because with the shorter brackets, I must be putting too much pre load on the cushion, and once it’s compressed to a certain point, it will not compress any further, and snap!
I have another bracket on the way, and would prefer to not snap this one as well.

I would appreciate your input and opinions (besides going to a coil over set up, which I would like to do, but not right now.)

Thanks in Advance,

Adam




Shaved Down Wedge


Broken Mount


Too much Gap!

 

Bump

 

hey Adam, seems like you were on the right track, but first thing wrong is getting those wedges. I know too late now but that's not needed despite some how-to web sites that are keeping it alive. All that's needed is just cut the original pad down to about a half or quarter inch or so, using a sawzall or belt sander. Then fit the bracket on to the spring, and cut the bracket just slightly lower to even with the top of spring. The bracket piece just cut off is now your new bolt spacer. Really that's it. If there's originally 2 shims at top of bracket, use just 1 (or none!). What a hack job.

So in your situation now, cut the new bracket so the top of the wedge is slightly higher than top of bracket so when assembled, it sandwiches in and there' s tight fit of the wedge and spring into the bracket against the frame. The bottom round pad does not get cut.

To get full 1inch lowering, it gets aggressive.. shave down the bottom of the rubber pad at each end of the spring, where the spring goes on the control arm.

lotsa luck, otherwise no idea what's cracking your brackets like that.

 

Thanks ljr95 for the reply!
After the fact, I realized that I could have shaved down the original, but too late now.
Just to make sure, there should be a little preload on the peak of the wedge? In other words, it needs to be pressing against the frame with the spring in it's relaxed position.

The other thought I had was that if the surface of the cut bracket is not straight, it will not be in full contact with the frame and might be stressing the bracket in a way that it can't equally distribute the load and snaps it. Just a thought.

Thanks,
Adam

 

yes, cut the bracket so top of wedge is a bit higher than bracket, so they should both meet on the shim/frame, of course needs some load on the wedge, as that's how it was originally. Using a cut-off tool gives a quick clean precise cut, worth it $20