Just lowered to limits of stock bolts and uncut bushings. After driving perhaps 200 miles, had the alighnment checked and discovered that just about everything was off.
Camber, caster, and toe, front and rear were all out, enough that hard accleration brought on some wander that was not there before lowering.

Now after alignment, the feel and tracking are superb!

 

Great to hear you have the car back on track :steering: However, just lowering the car on it's stock bolts will not fudge up the alignment. I did mine at home in about 45 minutes - all 4 wheels - and no worries. Even the OEM video that came with my 2001 shows how to do the lowering and advises no problems if following their procedure.

Not sure what happened. Not sure if the shop got ya for an alignment or what. I drove 17,000 miles after lowering and only did an alignment because I installed a new set of Firehawks - got a lifetime alignment - and never had any problems.

Good to hear alls well though.:thumbs:

SAVE THE WAVE :seeya :cheers: :cool:

 

i would love to watch a video on how to lower.....? :confused:
how could i see this i have a 98 :conehead

 

My alignment was way off after lowering and yet tire wear was ok prior so I think it changes geometry. BTW I am not wild about the loss of suspension travel on bad roads'.

 

I can't help but to disagree here.
This statement is just not true.
I don't know what else to say.
Dave

 

Do you have a pic? I'm trying to decide if I want to lower with the stock bolts or get new ones and cut the bushing.

 

I would alway recommend to have the car realigned after lowering. The price for alignment is a lot lower than new tires. Also the car will settle after a while and get lower, at least in the back. I raised my back up a half inch after several months.

 

Send me your email address and I will send lowered pics and before as well!
Jack
john.behrle@verizon.net

 

:iagree: ANYTIME you mess with the suspension, ya gotta check the alignment. Given the fact that the tie rod ends, and the upper and lower A-arms, all have different mounting locations relative to the spindle, says the alignment will change with lowering. Not necessarly the camber or caster, but the toe for sure!, As a matter of fact a lot of people don't realize it but the toe on a stock car changes as you drive down the road. Look where the tie rod pivot points are in relation to the A-arms pivots and tell me the toe does not change as the suspension travels through it's arc. (It may be a small amount, but it does change).

This is why I run a bump steer kit. What it does is eliminates toe change as the suspension loads and unloads on the track. That is why it is so hard to install, you need to put the car on a alignment rack install the kit and then jack the suspension to the top of it's travel and check the toe and then pull it to the bottom of it's travel and check the toe again. You add shims till the total difference in toe from the top to the bottom is zero. And you got to jack it up and lower it and shim several times to get it right. It took my guy a full day and the Toe change when done was less than .001 degrees. The NASCAR boys do this, as when the car goes into a hard turn and the weight shifts one side is in compression while the other side is under no load and the Toe change can cause a car to push in the turns. They set up for zero change, and that is hard to reach.

My two cents, but it does change the toe settings. I find it hard the GM would say it doesn't, as we have had mine on the rack a lot and I can guarantee you it does change and if you do any serious autocross or track you will feel the difference in the turns. She may come loose earlier, or push and plow a turn because the two front tires are really fighting each other for traction, the outside tire will win, but what speed penalty are you paying.

I know this may be a pureists view and a nit to some, but when championship times are but a few tenths to hundreths of a second apart it makes a difference! And it will make a long term difference in how long your tires last.

Sorry, for the rant, But I pay more attention to this than HP.

:rant: :steering:
Jer

 

I was surprised to read your response since I know what the machine said (I ahve the print outs, both before and after) and the alignment rack is the best, latest and greatest, etc.
The differences were all subtle but they were enough that i could tell the difference when I drive so I maintain that something changed when we lowered and re-alighning corrected that.
Regards
Jack

 

When I lowered mine, using stock hardware, the alignment was out on all 4 corners by a significant amount. When I lowered a friend's '97 2 full inches (cut front bushings, longer bolts in rear), and he had his aligned at the same business by the same specialist, it was almost straight, just some minor tweaking done.

What my experience tells me is that you don't know what kind of alignment you've got coming from the factory. Just because some are straight after aligning doesn't mean all, or even most, are the same way.

Bottom line: getting an alignment done is a good thing to do just to know what you've got.

Have a good one,
Mike

 

Jack,
I suspect she may have been out of alignment a bit before and it may have gotten worse. kind of hard to argue with the geometry. the caster is set by the mounting points of the A-arms and looking from the side view of the car the angle of the spindle in degrees. In other words the upper ball joint should lead the lower and when measred should be somewhere between 7.4 and 6.0 degrees depending on your preference. Essentially it determines how hard it is to steer the car from a straight line of travel the less the easier, the more the harder. The Camber is again in degrees and looking from the front it is again the relationship of the upper a-arm to the lower. For most street Apps and run crap tires the closer to zero the better for tire wear and maybe a couple of tenths negative just to be safe. This deals with the tire-ground contact patch. Toe, is the relation of both tires and where they are pointing as the car goes down the road. Toe is usually measured in inches rather sixteenths of inches and there is a conversion to degrees and also deals with the relation of one tire turning to the other both in radius and distance. Toe has two numbers relative to the adjustment the Toe of a single tire and the Total toe. Now the toe is adjusted at the tie rod ends.

For the real pure guys, they even take into conseridation the weight of the driver when setting these alignments up.

And the really really neat thing about a Corvette is that it has two front ends!!! The rear suspension has exactly the same adjustments as the front.

Whew! Smoke em if ya gottem!
Jer

 

How many miles will it take the suspension to "settle"? I lowered mine this past weekend and put about 50 miles on it afterwards.
I think once it settles i'm going to take the rear up about 1/2 inch to give the leafs springs some play room. I hit a small drop in the pavement and almost lost a filling.

I used the stock bolts with no cut bushings and bottomed the front bolts out.


:cheers:

 

Depends on the roads, but I would say 50 to a hundred miles just to be sure. Also make sure when they drive it up on the rack they don't jack it up by the frame to check the ball joints, like some do. The car needs to sit on the rack, just as it is driven. Some say you can jack it on the rack under the ball joints, but I don't recommend that, as it shifts the entire weight of the car. I suspect believe it or not that alignment can be one of the most complex jobs you can get into. When we did the bump kit on my car we were jacking and pulling via the cross member, but the overall (settled alignment) was already set. Then we rechecked all of it again later. I got to tell ya the guys did some work, and one hell-of-a nice job!
Jer

 

I gotta say, with the Hotchkiss bars and the increased spring rate (from lowering) the little Blue Dragon corners like a go-kart even with the run craps on. Change the alignment and go to the Hoosiers, and I know I can pull 1G plus in a hard turn or on the skid pad, Nooooo problem! :party:

 

I would recomend going all the way down on the front stock bushings and installing longer bolts in the rear. The rear needs to come down just a tad bit lower than the stock bolts will allow if you turn the fronts down all the way. No cutting needed..unless u have Z06. I installed the Z06 suspension so I shortened the front bushings when I installed the spring. With the higher Z06 spring rates you can not get it low enough IMO just turning the bolts.
Hope this helps.
:cheers:

 

Thanks, I'll try it. Yours looks about right.