I've always owned F bodies, looking at buying a C5. I was wondering about lowering a stock C5, got on ebay and they sell these $40 lowering kits? How do they work. Looks like they consist of a bolt, flat washer, and lock nut? Can't be that simple can it?

 

Try here for some answers, yes it's easy. Just don't forget the alignment afterwards.

http://www.z06vette.com/diy_lower.php

 

You can lower a C5 by using the stock bolts that come on the car for that purpose. Put the car on a lift, and where the leaf spring connect to the control arms you will find a bolt on top of where the two suspension pieces meet Going up lowers the ride height going down raises it. My car is lowered all the way and is 4 inches off the ground and the front air dam is less than 2 from the ground so it (the air damn) scrapes on speed bumps and driveways no matter what I do but fortunately the air dam is on a spring so it is designed to scrape.

The back is much easier I forget the nut and bolt sized but in a nutshell use a wrench to hold the nut in place and a power drill in reverse on the bolt face on the bottom of the control arm (the leaf spring is above the control arm if memory serves) to back the bolt out (lowering the car).

In the front you just have to use a wrench and raise the nut (lower the car). I'm sure you can do this with a simple jack and jack stand but having an actual lift where you can walk under the car makes it a lot easier. Reading this it wont make much sense but once your under the car it is really very simple.

Those kits just use a shorter rubber bushing and frankly I would ride with the car lowered on the stock bolts before trying to go lower, as you lower the car the ride stiffness and speed bumps become the enemy and if you go too fast you will bottom out and scrape the underside of your car.

I took my car to a tuner to to have him look at something and while we had the car up he showed me how to do this and it took a few minutes, once you put the car down on the lift you will have to drive around a bit for the car to settle then take it to get an alignment.


*** I am no expert so some of my facts might be a bit off but this DIY will work to lower your car on the stock bolts. Mechanic types can chime in and make corrects as needed.

 

I just wasted like 10 minutes of my life writing my response when all I had to do was a search.

 

Prior to adjusting the front bolts, familiarize yourself with how the bolt/bushing adjustments affect height by altering the spring tension. It's really simple.
At the top of the spring where the hex head stud portion of the adjuster bolts protrude through the spring, there is a small trough. Fill that area with PB BLASTER or similar product and allow it to do its magic. It doesn't take much! It might take a while depending on how clean or rusty the bolts are. When you see the oil has penetrated through the spring on down the threaded portion of the bolt, you'll know the spring pocket is lubricated. Otherwise, you might strip out the threaded portion of the spring requiring replacement.
When you take pressure off the spring, the rubber bushing will probably be stuck to the lower control arm. You'll know this when you turn the bolt and it springs back by itself. You can use a little more PB BLASTER around the base of the bushing and a flat metal putty knife to gradually break the bushing free. After that, the bolt can be turned by hand w/o the need of a 10mm wrench. You can add a light application of lithium grease to the bottom of the bushing to reduce the chance of it seizing to the control arm again.