I'm ready to lower about an inch. What exactly is the procedure? Thanks.

 

Here are a couple of old threads that might help.

This thread discusses lowering it as far as it will go with the standard bolts (i.e., without cutting the bushings or replacing the bolts with the WCC replacement bolts):

Lowering Thread #1

This thread discusses swapping out the bolts or cutting the bushings on the stock bolts to get it lower:

Lowering Thread #2

In thread #2, post #19, I said that you must do a little minor disassembly of the rear suspension to cut the bolts. This is not necessarily so - If you scroll down to post #28 in that thread, Brianmargarita says that he was able to cut the rubber bushings down with a sawzall without undoing the suspension. I believe I've also seen a post that said you could undo some bolts at the top of the suspension rather than the bottom as I did. If you're gonna replace the bolts, you're gonna have to undo the suspension to get the old bolt out and the new one in.

Pics when you're done!!!

Bob

 

How much clearance do you need between the front tires and the fenders so the tires dont hit the fenders when cornering hard?

Is the amount of bolt movement proportional to the amount of body movement?

 

Mike

As far as how low you can go without clearance problems between tire and fender, I dunno! You've got the Z06 fenders and wheels, so you'll just have to give it a try and see. It only takes a few minutes to adjust each wheel - once you know what you're doing you can probably adjust the height of all 4 wheels in 20 minutes or less.

To turn the lowering bolt, you just jack up the car to let the wheel hang down and pull that frame member down. The leafspring will flex down and keep tension on the rubber bushing where it sits on the frame member, so I just take a bottle jack and (with a small block of wood on top to keep from damaging the leafspring) jack up the leafspring until the pressure on the bushing is relieved enough to turn the bolt. You may even be able to turn it by hand when there's no pressure on it, although there are flats on the end of the bolt so you can adjust it with a 10mm wrench as you can see in the picture.

Here are a couple of pics. You can see the bolt removed from the leafspring in the bottom pic. The bolt has a big flat face, and the rubber bushing is bonded to that part.

I think (not sure) that it is essentially a 1:1 ratio. You can see in the top pic how the bolt goes through the leafspring with the bushing sitting on a frame member. When you screw the bolt in an inch, I think you're effectively lowering the car an inch.

You can just about count threads in that top picture, and it looks like there are something like 12 or so threads in an inch. I can't recall, but I think when I lowered my car it was something like that - about 6 or 8 turns to change height by 1/2 inch.

There is no reason to unbolt anything when doing this, unless you want to take out the lowering bolt to cut the bushing, or to replace it with a WCC bolt. Many forum members have said that they can get a sawzall in there to cut the bushing without unbolting anything.

You can cut any amount of bushing off. I think it's about 1-1/4 inches thick. I cut it almost all the way down to the metal part - I left about 1/8" as a pad to avoid metal-to-metal contact instead of letting the flat metal part sit on the frame member. It looks like the bushing in the top pic has had about 1/2 of it cut off.

You can see in the top pic how the bolt is screwed into the leafspring from underneath. In the top picture it has been screwed in so the flat part with the bushing is right up against the leafspring - that will lower the car as much as possible.

Good luck!

Bob

 

Excellent!! Thanks!

 

Mike

You ought to drive up to my place tomorrow and we'll slam that sucker!!!

I think it's only about 30 or 40 miles up here from Winter Springs.

PM sent with contact info.

Bob

 

nice write up in thread #2

 

I was able to fine tune the hieght with the wheels on.