Coilovers, just eye ball it?

[89hatchman]

Just put coilovers on and roughly adjusted it before calling it a night. The front sits at about 2 foot even from ground to the top of the fender well.

The back sits about 2 foot half an inch on the passenger side and the driver sits about 2 foot and 1 inch.

Is there a better way to adjust everything other than jack it up, rotate the coilover to raise/lower, put it back on the ground, and see from there?

[tds14]

Try a tape measure for starters...

[2.5T_/<ouki]

I usually use a tape measure and measure how much threading in between the the collars.

[89hatchman]

Try a tape measure for starters...

thats what I did. It was roughly 2.5" from collar to collar. But I guess it wasn't exact...

[zerodameaon]

Or something is bent, like your whole car which is pretty likely.

[EatSleepDriftS13]

Try some calipers to measure it, I bought some digital calipers at Harbor Freight for cheap to get it exact, worked pretty well

[89hatchman]

how do you set the front to the back? I assume you can't set the same collar to collar gap from the front to the back

[Wookie384]

You don't measure the shock/coilover itself for ride height, using that method will never yield good results, even if you have a brand new car from the factory the shock/coilover will be just slightly off. Pick a symmetrical part of the car for measurement from left to right like jacking point on the rocker panel (all four points should/could come out even), or top of fender well (front to rear you more or less eyeball it).

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

[KoukiMonsta]

You don't measure the shock/coilover itself for ride height, using that method will never yield good results, even if you have a brand new car from the factory the shock/coilover will be just slightly off. Pick a symmetrical part of the car for measurement from left to right like jacking point on the rocker panel (all four points should/could come out even), or top of fender well (front to rear you more or less eyeball it).

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2


yes, this is the best way to get it exact

but for first install measureing them is good to get it 'close'

[89hatchman]

You don't measure the shock/coilover itself for ride height, using that method will never yield good results, even if you have a brand new car from the factory the shock/coilover will be just slightly off. Pick a symmetrical part of the car for measurement from left to right like jacking point on the rocker panel (all four points should/could come out even), or top of fender well (front to rear you more or less eyeball it).

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

Is there a rule of thumb for how many turns on the coils results in how many inches of up or down movement? All my wheels are within a 1/4 inch or so of each other. I just need to fine tune it.

[zerodameaon]

Is there a rule of thumb for how many turns on the coils results in how many inches of up or down movement? All my wheels are within a 1/4 inch or so of each other. I just need to fine tune it.

Nope because the threads and such are different on most coils. Just going to have to turn it, drop it, check it and adjust as needed.

[Wookie384]

Is there a rule of thumb for how many turns on the coils results in how many inches of up or down movement? All my wheels are within a 1/4 inch or so of each other. I just need to fine tune it.

Nope because the threads and such are different on most coils. Just going to have to turn it, drop it, check it and adjust as needed.

Nope, 'X" amount of turns will never result in 'Y' inches of adjustment on a coilover because it's dependent on the weight of the car at that corner, it's hard to explain without getting waaaaayyy to technical, and I'm bad at explaining things. But like zerodameaon said, you're gonna have to adjust, check, adjust, check and keep going till each corner is how you like it.

[Croustibat]

If you dont have adjustable ARB droplinks, dont try to get the same ride height on the 4 corners.

1/ before trying to adjust height, disconnect the roll bars
2/ do some adjustments by eyeballing / measuring heights
3/ connect the droplinks on the shortest side, front and rear. Note: use ramps, dont jack the car for this. you need all wheels on ground, and preferably weight in in the driver seat.
4/ write down how much of a gap you got on the other droplink (front and rear), then adjust the coilovers again so you reduce that gap to 0 WITHOUT preloading your ARBs.

If you adjust the height and preload your rollbars, the car will be all over the place as soon as you brake/ accelerate / corner, or everytime the road is not perfectly flat. The bigger the sway bars, the harder the effect. I had 1/2" preload on a 30mm front ARB (granted, coupled with terrible bump steer), and my s13 tried to kill me all the time.

You can have different heights left and right so a bent chassis looks alright, but then you NEED adjustable droplinks to compensate.


Best thing to do is to get adjustable droplinks and get your car corner weighted, but somewhere i think your coilovers are worth the price of a corner weight setting, so you might not worry about that.

Still, do whatever you can to remove any preload on your ARBs. That is mandatory.