Hi everyone. I lowered my C5 today following lowering instructions and saw no change after driving it for 10-15 mins why is this? is it possible that it will not go lower on stock struts? anyways any input would be appreciated.

 

Did you run a tape measure to the wheel opening to see what your height is. I did mine and am setting at 27" in the front and 28" in the rear. I have adjustment left. You may need to do the adjustment more than once.

 

First of all our C5s do not have struts. They have a composite spring in the front and rear that run laterally across the car with a shock absorber at each wheel. As far as lowering the car, it will take a day or so for it to settle. Drive it for a week and it will go down. Did you measure the ride height before you lowered it? It is a good idea to have the alignment checked after it has had a chance to settle.

 

Need about 50-100 miles for it to settle completely. its

 

Ok thx I was not sure. I am at 27.3" front and 28.1" in rear but like I said I have driven it maybe 30 miles so far so we will see by the end of this next week. I am going to do rotors next week anyways so I can look then to see if it needs more adjustment.

Another question I had is on the rear I have it set at 1-1.5 thread left on each side and on the front I was able to get about 7 threads out of driver side and way more out of passenger if I wanted to keep going I was at about 8-9 why is this? I put both at 7 but I was curious as the why the drivers side is tight at 7 and the passengers had a lot more to go.

Thx for the info guys its different lowering these cars compared to S2K's

 

Drive it for a few hundred mile and see if it doesn't settle. If it does then finish filling out your profile and come back and tell us that it's lower!

 

1. If you have seen some of the other threads you will see that you should NEVER measure ride height at the fender lips. ALWAYS meausre ride height at the jacking points. The fenders are just hung on the car and vary all over the place. You need to measure ON A FLAT SURFACE (and no your garage floor isn't nearly flat) to get a correct ride height determination. If you don't you will jack weight from corner to corner across the car and it will wander and handle funny since there will be a big cross cornerweight.

One good way to do it is to lower the bolts at each end of the car the same amount, that is a lot closer way than just getting under there and jacking with the screws. If you have dorked with it and moved the screws unequally, then you need to find a level surface and set the ride heights properly.

2. The thread counts won't be even from side to side or front to back, they will be all over the place. Since you have made it the same you are jacking weight from corner to corner and you can expect funny handling.

3. 1 to 1.5 threads in the back is too low. Unless you have shorter shocks you WILL be bottoming out the back shocks at that height (been there done that). The car will ride rougher than a cob, and if you are cornering and hit a bump you will get severe oversteer. You want to see at least 3 threads on the lowest of the rear screws to be in the right range.

4. The suspension geometry of these cars is designed to work in a correct range. Lowering more than that just screws up the handling. It continues to amaze me that people keep lowering these cars more than what is correct thinking that "lower is better" and "more lower is more better". It is simply stupid. If you want to lower the car more that what I've described, go get a set of lowered spindles (for big bucks from LGM) and have at it. But if you are using stock geometry you are simply screwing up a good thing if you lower it too much.

 

My wifes rear-end has lowered by 6 inches- But the ride is smooth-

 

Good stuff here Solo, as always! I've been working hard to find a shock that is lower in the C5 tech area, but as you stated, you'll be riding on the bumpstops and it hurts! What do you think about coilovers vs. the spindles?

 

Solo, just a question then to address what you are saying.

One how can a garage not be level unless the person who built it was an idiot?
A garage has to be level to comply with building codes.

Second I can raise it up to 3 notches in the rear but so far I have seen no difference in handling at 1 notch.

 

There is nothing really to settle as your not changing anything other than 4 bolt heights that wouldnt take 100 miles to settle afterwards.
Once the shocks bounce a couple times thats it and its done.
I measured/tested my stock Z06 shocks after it was lowered max in front and with lowering bolts in back down an inch and they still had .75" compression left on them front and rear.
Ive seen some stock shocks bottom out though when car lowered and it would never "settle" right.

 

Ok well I think some senior members think otherwise so we should try and get this cleared up for everyone. Another thing I wanted to know was, do the stock bolts lower as much as possible compared to aftermarket lowering bolts? And what effect does this have or is it just better to save up 2-3k and buy a coilover system.

 

No biggie though. Drive it 100 and get it aligned...But again what is there to settle that needs 100 miles?
Once the jack is lowered down and suspension jounced a few times there is literally nothing that would need time to settle more unless something was binding and in that case needs to be looked at.
I measured my height fter lowering at frame f/r after a drive around the block and again at 40 miles and there was no difference at all. If someones is not settling for 100+ miles then then something else isnt right.

 

Ok so here we go. Today I went ahead and took your advice and raised rear to 3 notches the problem was though that after driving the car the measurments where this. 18.4 from ground to fender on driver and 18.2 on passanger with 3".25 on driver from fender to a spot on tire. and 3".5 on passanger side. Now I have since turned the driver side down 2 turns and will drive it again right now. but I am also having problems with the front.

First off there is no way they adjust in the front after 1 ride, the rears do but the fronts will not. For instance I started off today with 17.25" on driver side and 16.9" on passanger. I knew that I could not lower the driver side anymore because it was too tight already so I decided just to raise the passanger to 17.25 also I tryed to do this and have ended up at 17.2" passanger currently but my driver side without any change is sitting at 17.7" why is this? it makes no sense to me anyways I will go get gas brb

 

If you want tire rubbing lowering you'll need to modify your front bolts by removing all the rubber and get longer rear bolts. The car will handle like crap, make no mistake! But, it'll be darn cool

 

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ok update. I am at 18 on driver side rear, 17.9 on passenger rear.

17.25 front pas, 17.5 driver. The problem that is coming up is that I do not know if I can adjust the driver side because it will not loosen any more.

 

You are not going to get exactly same measurements L/R on front and rear. Once you sit in car its gonna lower slightly on drivers side also so your gonna be closer than you think. You will see if you adjust the LF some then RR is going to change just as adjusting other ones will affect other side at other end as well. Just remember changing one bolt height will affect the opposite end other side as well a little bit.
The way I do it is measure under frame F/R to get 1/4-1/2" rake. You can start at wheel well lips to get it started but its the rake of frame for correct measuring points and distances. You are gonna go postal changing a little on different sides trying to get em all evened up. You make 1 bolt change on 1 side and its gonna change other side aswell without even touching other side.
I also used C6 front bolts on my C5 as they dont have rubber bushings on them so its like cutting 1 bushing off the C5 bolt so its lower than stock c5 bolts. Here is difference between the C6/C5 bolts.

 

I'm guessing your using metric, so I'm all confused on your measurements. Stock height of these cars is 27.5 fronts (to top dead center of fender with stock size tires and 30lbs of pressure)- (I measured my car and 4 others at a car show last weekend, every car was within 1/8" of this number)- and 27-7/8 for the rear (again, everyone was within 1/8"), so I know where these cars start.

When I lower mine and re adjust, one quick run through the neighborhood, a 2 mile loop on the freeway, and I'm settled to the max.

If you started at stock, measured to your fenders and they were all the same (rear same both sides, front same both sides) then we would know 2 things-

the car started level using fenders (they're just easier to measure than frame bottom)

How much you are dropping.

Stock bolts will let you go like this

Front: 1/2" max drop on the stock bolts...BUT- many times the bushing is smashed and more so on one side, causing one side to start out higher than the other, and even after you adjust, one side will go lower than the other (if the bushing is smashed).

Best thing is to remove the front bolt, cut them off so they are even (I cut mine to 1/8"- just enough for cushion so I could max the car without removing.

Max with 1/8" you'll get 1.5" drop- removing the bolt gives you another 1/2".

Rears; you can get 3/4" if you max out the stock bolt (leaving 1 thread). Each thread is about 1/8" in change of height (I know, I've changed mine 10 times the past 3 weeks). You can get more if you cut off a rib on the bushings that hold the bolts. Each rib is 1/4"- so I cut 1 rib from each (top/bottom) and you can get a total of 1-1/4" drop.

Want to see more- look at this

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c5-t...ng-the-c5.html

 

Sry socal no its been a long day those are suppose to be 28 rear and 27 front numbers. but as you can see if they are stock at 27.5 I am seeing litterally no change in fronts. I have 5-6 notches showing on front bolts. ok so here is my question how do i measure rake on these cars because its soo hard to measure with measuring tape on ground to jacking points and get exact. I can easily do it with fenders thx.