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Re: 69 Ride Height and how to "settle" the rear
The angle of the half shafts and the compression of the spring in comment 7 do not look bad. It looks like the car has a lot of positive camber at the rear in the first photo. Maybe setting the camber to at least negative 1/2 degree would cause it to look right.Comment
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Re: 69 Ride Height and how to "settle" the rear
So I just checked the spring link bolts. I'm pretty sure they are original and look to be a bit under 6 1/2" long so that can be ruled out.
Pat, yes that wheel does look to have positive camber but it must be just the angle of the pic. I just rechecked the camber and both rear wheels have about -1/4 degree camber.
I guess if I wanted to "bubba" this I could re-shim the body but that would be a tremendous amount of work now and not be dealing with the root cause. I kept track of the body shims and for the most part put the same about back to the original locations and I would like to keep it that way( from front to back, Drivers side are 2-4-4-9 & Passenger side is 3-2-2-5).
I agree that it will settle over time and if I was less than an inch high I would do just that. Almost 2" high I feel needs to be addressed some how.Comment
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Re: 69 Ride Height and how to "settle" the rear
Greg:
Do not discount what I stated above in Post #2. A friend had similar issues with his 67 after rebuilding the rear. It required about 300-400 lbs in the rear to get the D and K dimensions, but he added the weight and then torqued the bolts. His height came down significantly and he was extremely satisified.
When I did my own car, it took about 300 lbs in the cabin to get the dimension. Car is still about 1/2 inch high in the rear, but the spare tire and carrier are also still in the attic. That should help once I install them.
FWIW.
LarryComment
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Re: 69 Ride Height and how to "settle" the rear
Hi Larry,
Oh I haven't discounted it in the least and now that my tire tub is out I'll see if I can find a way to get an accurate D dimension.
As for adding weight, I did a little comparison tonight. I had my daughter measure the wheel well lip to the floor(dim P in the 70 AIM) as it sits now and then with my 210 lb butt sitting on the rear and it lowered from 29-3/4" to 29" so only 3/4"difference. Dim P should be about 27-7/8" so it still has over an inch to go. To get it down to the proper height I'd have to add 400-500 lbs which seems excessive.
I'm actually starting to wonder now if maybe this spring hasn't been rearched at some time....Comment
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Re: 69 Ride Height and how to "settle" the rear
Greg,
silly idea, but it has worked for me several times in the past with different cars where the Original spring was removed and put back in. I am assuming it is the same spring. If you loosens up the rear spring bolts on the end of the spring and backed off just a little bit on the four bolts that attach the center of the spring to the bottom of the rear end housing, and if you have access to a car trailer my suggestion would be to load the car on the trailer, tie down the car like you normally would and take it on a short drive on the trailer and the suspension will settle. Again, sounds silly but assuming everything is correct it has worked for me many times."SOLID LIFTERS MATTER"Comment
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Re: 69 Ride Height and how to "settle" the rear
Hi Ron,
That's not a silly idea at all. It actually sounds like a good idea however I've already inadvertently done that when I trailered the car about 36 hours round trip for paint. If it did settle, unfortunately it wasn't enough so I'm still at square one.
What I've done this past week is measure my original leaf's and compare them with what is mentioned in the video that Tom posted and they are bang on. I was finally able to get under the car for an accurate measurements of dim. D and both sides are about 2-13/16". My calculation using the AIM is that it should be 1.81" +- 1/4" so that confirms that it is riding way too high.
At this point I'm wondering if maybe the spring assy that i installed had been re-arched before I got it. Not much else makes sense so now that I've cleaned up my original spring I'm going to paint it a see how it rides. If it is still too low then I'll mix and match the set until I get the correct height.
I'll let you all know how it turns out. If anyone has any other thoughts please let me know.Comment
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Re: 69 Ride Height and how to "settle" the rear
Well better late than never, here is how it turned out...
After reinstalling the original spring set it was still too high by about an inch so better, but still not proper. I ended up finding dimensions for the wheel lip to floor from I believe was a 1970 AIM and have been using that as a guide as it is way easier to measure and is what your eye sees anyways.
In the end it looks like the compression rubbers are way to stiff. These have been in the car for a few years now and I couldn't wait for them to eventually compress if they ever would so I cut a half inch off of each one and that has brought my rear right height to the proper spec so now I can do a proper alignment. It looks funny now though because the rubber doesn't compress and fill the cups on the spring or trailing arm like it should but tis is how it will have to be for now.
Does anyone know where I could find a set of good quality spring/trailing arm rubber cushions that are soft enough to compress and give me proper rear right height?Comment
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Re: 69 Ride Height and how to "settle" the rear
Spring link cushions are still available from GM... part number is in your AIM. The aftermarket repros a junk... overly compress and crack in the less than a year. There have been other threads about this.
DukeComment
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Re: 69 Ride Height and how to "settle" the rear
GM #3831586.
LarryComment
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Re: 69 Ride Height and how to "settle" the rear
Thanks guys, It never even crossed my mind that they were still available.Comment
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