OK, I am new to owning a C5 Vette. What is meant by "lowering it on the bolts"? If anyone can explain this, or even better, I would like to here the pros and cons to doing this, I would really appreciate all your wisdom, I would hate to make a decision half baked that could result in damage to my ride!

How low could I go? And is the process reversable ?

Or is there "the" right way?

Thanks!

Rick

 

There is a bolt at each corner of the car that you can turn and therefore lowering or raising the car, so yes it is 100% reversible.
It will be detrimental to the ride quality and you will scrap more often but other than that you should be fine.

 

Personally, I can't understand how anyone gets away with it without severely scraping the front bumper and/or sides. Mine is stock and I scrape the front pretty often. Yes, lowered vettes look awesome, but for me the cost to practicality and driveability is far too great. Of course, my opinions are based on the horrible condition of roads in my area.

If you do lower your vette, you may want to consider changing out your shocks to some sport type shocks made for lowered cars. If you don't, you may bottom out often. I hear that the Bilstein sports are good.

 

As a novice you probably haven't quite figured out the advanced search feature. Here is what I found in about 2 minutes.

http://www.frankhunt.com/FRANK/hobbi...5_Lowering.htm

Good information on lowering.

 

There is some good information on lowering in that link, but there is also some misinformation in there that could be a problem....

First of all the poster did mention that a flat surface is required. What he didn't mention is that most garage floors aren't flat enough for this. You need to make sure the surface you are measuring from is flat within 1/8 of an inch to do this right.

Second, the poster recommends measuring from the fender lips. That is absolutely wrong. The fenders on these cars are all over the place, they are simply hung on and can be as much as 3/8 of an inch different from side to side if the car is properly set up. ALWAYS measure from the frame at the jacking points on the front and rear. Measuring from the fenders is worthless. There is a proper ride height tool, but if you don't have that you are far better measuring at the frame rails than the fender lips. Measure from the frame rails at the front and rear jacking points, insure that you have at least 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch of rake and don't lower the front jacking point by more than an inch (3/4 of an inch is really as much as you need to get best performance).

In lowering the front it is important to take the load off of the springs. This can be done by putting a block of wood under the spring to get the weight off of the jacking screw. Since he took the shock mount loose there is less load on the jacking screw, but it is important to make sure there is no load on the bolt when you try to turn it. There are proably thousands of 10mm lowering bolt heads that have been stripped because the weight wasn't removed from the bolt before the guy started trying to turn the jacking screw while there is weight on it. Also, it is common, since these cars aren't new, for the screws to have rusted in the spring. Before you even start thinking about turning the front screws you should spray them liberally with PB blaster to help make sure the screws don't get damaged. If you damage the inserts you will need to replace the spring so you need to be careful.

The original poster said you should try to set the screws so that they have the same number of threads showing. This is wrong. The correct way to do it is to count the number of turns that you make on the screws and turn the screws on each side the same amount. That is, if you turn the left front screw 3 turns, you should turn the right front screw three turns also. An additional tip, if you turn the front screws in one full turn increments, the car won't take long to settle. When the car is settling, what is happening is that the rubber pads on the bottom of the lowering bolts is deforming, and if you turn each screw in full turn increments it will already be deformed and it won't take days to settle out.

Same thing in the rear, turn the screws the same number of turns from side to side. In lowering dozens of these cars (and properly corner weighting them) I have never seen the rear bolts have the same number of threads above the bolt on both sides.

It is unfortunate that somebody who didn't really know what he was doing took the time to do a nice writeup with some bad information in it.

 

I scrape very seldom and im lowered a lot but as mentioned above it depends on the roads in your area. I cant remember the last time I encountered a speed bump but its been years. I dont think ive ever scraped my rocker panels either but I dont make it a practice going in high crowned parking lot entrances either.
I have trimmed my center air dam 1" and it didnt affect the cooling at all in town or on freeway.

 

I thought all the information on the internet was reliable and accurate.

 

Oh, I'm sure it is, and if you believe that I've got a tower in Paris that I think you might be interested in...

 

The air dams arent so much for cooling as they are for high speed aerodynamics. Removing them or even triming then can cause the car to become unstable at higher speeds.

 

 

 

It's not the airdam that I am referring to. I actually have scraped the bottom of the front nose a few times. I don't really worry about the airdamn since it was designed to scrape.

 

as well
Ive been 170+ numerous times and there is no instability at all with no air dam. In fact the norm is to remove it for high speed runs over 160+ as way too much air gets up in the engine compartment from it. Its better for the air to go straight under car and out the back vs up into it.
Ive noticed better stability even at 100 without it.

 

Ah ok...sorry..well in that case.. Ive never scraped the bottom of my front fascia....ever. The front section of the radiator cradle will scrape first and should not allow fascia to scrape unless you are in one helluva crowned road.