I have a 2002 C5 that I lowered 2 weeks ago. For the back I cut part of the bushing and used the stock bolts. For the front I took out the stock bolt completely. I read several articles that said it was ok to lower the car this way, and don't get me wrong it looks great and handles like a dream, but now when I turn the wheels a certain way I hear a popping kind of noise coming from the front right side. What's going on under there?? I'm debating on cutting the front bushings and putting them back, but I really like the way the car sits now. Can anyone give me some insight to what this noise may be??

 

Come on guys

 

Double check all suspension joints for play / wear. IE: Ball joints, A arm bushings, tie rod ends and sway bar bushings. Check for sway bar alignment left to right. If it has shifted, it can come into contact with the A arm under certain conditions. Check front hubs for bearing play. If that is all good, check and lube the rear axle shaft splines and re torque the bolts. They can make a clicking sound if dry and loose.

 

what all did you have to remove/loosen to remove the front bolts?..Double check tightness on all. Also, is the noise at full lock? ..maybe your tires are hitting the inner fenders or outer lip??

 

How's your front sway bar bushing look? maybe time for a lube if it's creaking and popping but I agree with the above.

 

When my car started banging it was a sway bar endlink that was not tight enough.

Peter

 

get used to it, its defently the spring rubbing on the lower control arm. i have put rubber in there, someone suggested slivers of plastic but it always rubs through. you need to take the spring out and file down the edges and then put some thin rubber or plastic on there.- havent done that yet but maybe this weekend

 

Popping or creaking? Without knowing it sounds like a sway bar end link to me. I went with metal end links and new C6 Z06 shocks at the same time. NO noise from any corner of my car now,,,,had some creaking from the rear before.


Make sure you get an alignment very soon no matter what! Tire wear will be severe and at a rapid rate anytime you change the suspension at all!

 

I'd think the end of the spring would be more of a creaking sound.

My swaybar link popped so hard I could feel it through the floorboards. All it was doing was slipping back and forth in the hole once it was under enough tension. It was tight but not tight enough to not slip once under enough force.

Peter

 

My popping was solved by lubricating the sway bar bushing. I am lowered as well.

 

Newsflash, the articles you read lied. Congratulations, you have succeeded in ruining the car's handling characteristics and possibly causing future suspension damage as a result of your modifications. The front spring should not be riding on the lower control arm directly, those bushings were there for a reason.

 

i had the same problem, after i lowered i went and got 4 new tires and an aligment, while they were at it i told them to lube and spray EVERYTHING... i had more lube /wd40 on my car than gas n my tank..

But it fixed the problem

 

Yup, the bump stops hit about the same time the wheels just tuck a little into the fenders. FYI, if the top of your wheels are close to the fender lips then you're pretty much on the bump stops. Bouncing off the bump stops upsets the handling and ride of the car.

But, it's your car...

Peter

 

The creaking and popping that you are hearing is the end of the spring gouging the lower control arm. As you can probably figure out the stock front lowering bolts have a plastic end on them to protect the lower control arm. If you take that out the end of the spring can damage the control arm.

As ipuig noted your car will handle poorly and the rear suspension will bottom out with the car lowered all the way on stock bolts. Cutting the rear rubber bushings will only make it worse. You can expect to knock the rear suspension out of alignment because bottoming the rear shocks puts high loads in the rear alignment excentrics and that will cause the toe and camber to go funny in the rear.

Do yourself a favor and fix it before you damage your car or hurt yourself. Do a search on lowering and find the right way to do it.

 

This is idiotic, you should probably withold making recommendations until you learn more about C5 suspensions.

 

first off i do not beleive it to be idiototic, if it is in your mind, thats your opinion,

your correct i did and still dont know EVERYTHING about my c5....
BUT when i call the vette place i bought my car from (buyavette in georgia) and they said lube up... i took the advice, wasnt my own advice...

SO when i am recomended something.. DO IT, and it works... i will RE recomend it even without your permission

Have a wonderful day! :-)

 

You guys sound like a bunch of women fighting about who has the best looking dress Just fix it and go on...that way you may learn something

The Big Dog

 

Ipuig and Solofast, you're both saying that I ruined the cars handling and to do a search and find out how to do it the right way.*

The car handles 10x better than when it was at 4x4 status. It hugs the road and feels extremely stable. And what do you guys think? I searched for the wrong way to lower my car? I searched for a way to lower my C5 with the stock bolts and found a few articles/blogs/posts say removing the front bolts and cutting the rear bushings was the only way to go as low as I did without spending a ton on new suspension components. There's one inch from the tire to the outer wheel well all around. The wheels are not tucking under the fenders.*

I'm only hearing the popping at idle speed in ****ty parking lots and when I turn sharply at idle speed.*

So far I've heard :
1) Re-tighten everything
2) Tighten or replace end links
3) lube bushings*
4) Insert rubber guard where/If rubbing occurs
5) Do it the right way and fix it

*For the most part, everything is self explanatory. As for the last part, if someone wants to post a link on what they believe is "The right way" that would be greatly appreciated.*


Thanks for the help and recommendations,
JR

 

i have read some post that suggest putting a piece of carpet or the like in between the two parts where the front bolts were removed.

I lowered mine recently using zips kit. Mine had a banging due to the endlink breaking, (99 had plastic endlinks) switched those out and i'm all good again.

The looks alone is worth the hassle.

 

There is a huge amount of misinformation as to how to lower a Corvette, and how much you can lower it before it messes up the handling or even worse, it becomes dangerous to drive. I’ve tried to put together in one place a how to and, more importantly the why behind it, and hope this saves some folks some time and heartache by getting it done right the first time.

First of all, you shouldn’t lower these cars all the way on the stock adjustment bolts. If you take your car to any good race shop (like Phoenix Performance) to have it set up for the track, they won’t lower the car all the way on the stock bolts. This should tell you something right there. Moreover, I've tested these cars on the track at various ride heights and the stopwatch doesn't lie, they are faster and corner better when they are set up right, and that isn't as low as you can get on stock bolts.

The reason for this is that the suspension works properly when it is in the right range of motion, and if you lower it more than that it won’t. There are two technical reasons for this. The first is that the suspension camber gain that you get from a properly set up ride height goes away and you won’t get as much grip as you would if it was at the right height. The second reason is that if you lower it all the way on stock bolts in the rear, you will be nearly on the bump stops and have almost no travel. If you cut the bushings in the back you will be into the bump stops and have no travel. Using longer bolts in the back with stock shocks guarantees that you will be into the bump stops and have no travel. The rear bump stops are built into the shocks, and are progressive. Lots of people don’t realize they are into the bump stops because they don’t hammer the car if you don’t hit them that hard. So what’s the big deal about hitting the bump stops in the rear suspension? Well, first of all if you are cornering fast, hitting the bump stops results in instant oversteer. This means the tail will jump out and you can, very likely, lose control and wreck your car. Secondly, if you hit a good size pothole or bump, the rear shock acts like a wedge and this pushes the rear alignment adjustment eccentrics out of place and you will be taking the car back to the alignment shop because the car will be driving funny as you have knocked the rear alignment off.

I hear lots of people who say “I’ve taken out the front bolts and cut the rear bushings and my car feels really tied down, it only feels a little bouncy”. Well, it feels tied down because you are on the rear bump stops and the ride is going to be real firm, but if you take a corner quickly and hit a bump, or crank the car to avoid an accident, you are very likely to lose control and wreck your pride and joy. Ask anybody who has taken his car to the track like this and they will tell you that, at high speeds, these cars, if not set up right can be dangerous.

If you want your car down in the weeds the only way to avoid bottoming out the rear shocks is to get shorter rear shocks, or go get a set of dropped spindles. The right amount to lower these cars is about without dropped spindles is ¾ of an inch, and the absolute maximum for decent handling is 1 inch. Notice also that I haven’t suggested taking out the front bolts because this will A) cause the car to be too low for the geometry to work correctly, and B) it will result in the spring gouging into the control arm and will eventually ruin one or the other unless you put some kind of pad in there to allow the spring to slip on the control arm. The stock pads on the adjustment bolts allow some motion and this prevents damage to the spring and control arm.

So let’s start with how to lower your car the right way, assuming that you don’t have a race setup shop or access to a set of scales to corner weight your car when you are done, which is actually the best way to do it and really, the only way to do it if you are going to track or seriously autocross the car.

If your car is stock it was set properly from the factory and the ride height is right from side to side RELATIVE TO THE CHASSIS, which is the important part. First, in the front, take the weight off of the lowering bolt by jacking on the spring with a block of wood on the jack to keep from damaging the spring. If you don’t take the weight off you will likely round off the lowering bolt and make a mess of things. If you are lowering the car from stock, mark the screws with paint, nail polish or a sharpie, and turn the adjustment screws in equal increments from side to side. That is turn each front screws an equal amount of turns. In the front it also helps to turn the screws in full turn increments from where you started. This keeps the orientation of the deformed front pads the same and the car won't take as long to settle out. Turning them until they bottom and then back 1/4 of a turn assumes the car and the spring are level and is not the right way to do it. In the front expect the screws to be about two or three threads from bottoming out. Same thing for the rear, turn them equal amounts from side to side, but you don't need to turn the rears in full turn increments. You will find that, typically, in the rear, one screw is about 2 or three threads different from the other. THAT IS NORMAL. If you turn them to the same length you will screw up the corner weights of the car. Expect in the rear that one screw will be about two threads from bottoming out and the other will have about 4 or 5 threads showing.


If you have already gone in and messed with the bolts you have lost the setup that the factory put into the car in the first place and to get it really right you should have the car corner weighted. If you don't want to do that you can get close by finding a flat surface, (and no, most garage floors aren't nearly flat enough) like an alignment rack or a known leveled slab, and measuring so that the front jacking point is between 4.25 and 4.5 inches from the ground and equal on each side, the rear as measured at the rear jacking point should be a 1/2 an inch higher than the front. You want some rake in the car to keep the aerodynamics right at high speed. If you don’t the rear end of the car will lift at speed and that can be dangerous. NEVER measure from the fender lips. The fender lips are just plastic pieces that are hung on and are all over the place. EXPECT that the car will look different from side to side. As I said, these fenders are just hung on the car and you could see a difference at the fender lips of as much as a half an inch.

There you have it, all done, set to the right height for the best handling, and as balanced as you are going to get without cornerweighting the car.

I'm going to post this also in the sticky so that, hopefully others will find it before they screw up their car as bad as you have yours.