Don't you hate it when a simple job becomes complicated? (front spring upgrade)
04-13-2011, 02:58 PM
#1
Racer
Thread Starter
Front suspension upgrade...
Don't you hate it when a simple project turns into something much more complicated than what you originally thought it would?
That's exactly how I got to this point...
What was originally planned as an afternoon job installing a new front spring, ended up turning into a complete front suspension overhaul.
It all started when I found one of the bolts in the driver side spring retainer was seized within the retainer itself. The nuts on the bottom of the bolts all came out easily enough, but this one single bolt just would not slide out of the retainer! Since the retainer's are what hold the spring in place and I couldn't pull the retainer free from the bolt, I couldn't slide out the spring!
To spare you all the boring details, let's just say I ended up having to remove just about everything on the drivers side, just to gain access to the retainer from the side. At that point, using my trusty breaker bar, I tried prying the retainer free from the corrosion that was holding it to the bolt.
I put so much force on the bar, I actually shattered the retainer into 4 pieces.
The funny part was that the bolt was still seized inside a chunk of the aluminium retainer and was still attached the frame. I could finally slide out the spring, but I still had to sawzall the bolt to get it out of the frame. At that point, all I could do was laugh.
Here's a picture of the bolt that seized up inside the retainer. I never did get it out, but at least I was able to pull off the retainer and slide out the spring. I was finally back on track.
At this point, I looked at my shock, control arm, bushings, nuts, bolts and everything else I'd removed and started finding more "things" that needed to be done. In a nutshell, things kind of got out of hand. I figured what the hell, all the parts were off anyway, may as well replace everything while I was at it.
..
The spindles were removed, thoroughly cleaned, sanded and powder coated "silver vein".
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
The lower control arms were also cleaned, sanded down and powder coated the same "silver-vein" colour.
..
..
..
After some thorough scrubbing with a scotchbrite pad, the spring protectors were good to go. New Del-A-Lum bushings will be replacing the old rubber ones in the lower control arms. The upper control arms will be replaced with SPC's "racing" version of their adjustable arms and new Timkin wheel bearings will replace the old stockers.
..
..
The sway bar brackets were cleaned, sanded and then powder coated silver, as were the sway bar end-links. The new spring retainers were also powder coated and every single nut, bolt and washer will be upgraded with all new fasteners in either the same grade as the originals, or stronger if the option was available.
..
..
Here's some shots of the new VB&P "extreme" adjustable spring compared to the stock spring. The new one should be a lot easier to install given the fact that it's straight as an arrow compared to the banana-shaped stock spring.
..
Both upper and lower ball joints as well as the tie-rod ends will be replaced with new ones from Spicer.
..
Finally, here some shots of the new QA1 adjustable shocks and the new 32mm sway bar from VB&P
..
You can see in the second picture, the C5 front brake upgrade, 2 piece Baer rotors, and new wheels/tires. They were purchased a little while back and will be installed once everything starts going back together.
If anyone's interested in more pic's of the brakes, check the link in my sig for another thread I started about the brake upgrade. Over the next 2-3 weeks (hopefully), I'll be re-installing everything on the car and will update the thread again with my progress...
Stay tuned.
UPDATE:
With the front under-carriage thoroughly cleaned and degreased, the car's front end is now ready to start being assembled. All the suspension bits have been brought out to the garage and the project is finally starting to come together.
..
..
UPDATE:
When I first got my spring from VB&P, I had no idea what these aluminium cylinder pieces were for or even where they went but after removing the factory spring and its related parts, it soon became obvious. These aluminium inserts are milled down the centre to hold the spring and keep it in place.
You can see in the picture that the pad on the spring has an extra line of rubber down its centre. That rubber slides into the milled section of the aluminium cylinder and keeps the spring from sliding around. If you look closely, you can see that the milled section of the cylinder is actually off-set to push the spring back further towards the firewall. This is done for clearance reasons.
These 2 cylinders simply sit inside the stock spring retainers and are held in place via 2 small bolts which go through the existing holes in the bottom of the stock retainer, and screw into the bottom of the aluminium cylinders. Finally, you can see what the retainers look like with the spring in place.
..
..
UPDATE:
The Del-A-Lum bushing required the lower control arms to be drilled/tapped for grease fittings. I used a 7/32" bit to drill out the holes, then used 1/4x28 tap to create the threads. The fittings screwed in perfectly and after greasing up the new bushings, the lower arms are now ready to go on car.
..
..
..
..
UPDATE:
The ball joints turned out to be every bit as much a pain in the butt as I thought they'd be and it took me a few hours to finally get them in. Of coarse, having a rental ball joint press that couldn't press anything down straight didn't help things either.
The threaded shaft that goes through the c-clamp and does all the pressing, was crooked and kept pushing the ball joint in crooked as well. I had to resort to pressing the ball joint in one side at a time and rotating back and forth from side to side. Once the ball joint was about 3/4 way in, I was finally able to press down on the centre of the ball joint to press it the rest of the way through.
Took me a while, but I finally got them both installed. Next time, I'll make it easier on myself and buy a hydraulic press. It'll be worth it.
..
UPDATE:
After installing the front spring, I discovered that the outside edge of the spring on both passenger and driver side, was actually interfering with the sway bar end links on the lower control arms. After bringing up the issue with the folks over at VB&P, they gave me the option of either having a new spring sent out to me the following week, or I could keep the one I had now, and simply trim the edges of the spring for the required clearance. I was told that doing so would NOT void the warranty and since the spring is just fibreglass, I wouldn't be doing any damage to it at all by trimming it down.
I decided to just keep this one and go ahead and trim it down. The car's been on jack-stands long enough and I just want it back on the road. Big thanks to VB&P though, as they were very helpful and understanding of my situation and at least gave me the option of getting a new spring. Even though I chose to stick with the one I had, it's still nice knowing I at least had the option of getting a new one considering I'd bought this one so long ago. Big thanks to VB&P though for their customer service.
I decided to use a file to trim down the spring edges rather than a grinder, since I didn't want to risk removing more material than I needed. The job was surprisingly easy actually and once the ends were trimmed, I simply pained the exposed fibreglass with flat-black paint which matched the colour of the spring perfectly. You'd never know any work was done to them.
..
..
..
UPDATE:
Moving onto the front sway bar, the first picture below shows how the "out of the box" end-link bushing assemblies end up being too "wide" to fit the end-links. Picture number 2 shows how much I ended up having to cut off the "thrust washer" to get the bushing assembly to fit properly. (To avoid any confusion, the black bushing is made by Prothane and came with the sway bar. The red one is by Energy suspension and was purchased prior to buying the sway bar. BOTH bushings were the same size originally, so ignore the colour difference. The picture's just to illustrate how much the bushing had to be cut down).
BIG thanks goes to forum member "FostersPerformance" for helping me figure out what had to be done to get these bushings to fit and on which sides of the sway bar they were supposed to be installed on.
The final two pictures are a close up of the newly cut-down thrust washer in place and finally, what the bushing assembly looks like with the end-link in place.
..
..
UPDATE:
Here's where I'm at right now. The suspensions pretty much all put in at this point although I can't torque anything down until the car is level on the ground with the full weight of the front end sitting on the suspension. Before I do that, I still have to fix the brake line on the passenger side and install the front brakes. I'm finally starting to see the light at the end of this tunnel...
Stay tuned for more.
UPDATE:
Will be fixing the brake line this weekend, but in the meantime, I went ahead and torqued all the suspension bolts down to spec and threw on the new wheels/tires to see the car's new stance. At first, I tightened the adjusters all the way in, for maximum lowering affect but it turned out to be DANGEROUSLY low.
The front end sat so low that I couldn't even pull out my low-profile floor jack and the car still hadn't even fully settled onto the ground yet. I had to raise the front again, add ANOTHER set of 2x4's underneath the front tires to raise the front end so that it was about 4 inches off the ground. Finally, I was able to lower the car and pull out the jack . When I got up and walked over to the side of the car to see what everything looked like, I couldn't believe how low the front end was.
The top 3/4 inch of the tire was under the fender!!
I've never seen a C4 that low before and I had no idea these adjustable springs could lower a car so much. It looked cool as hell, but the reality is, I would have bottomed out just coming off the 2x4" sheets I had underneath the wheels, never mind exiting the driveway.
For safety's sake, I had to raise the car. I played around with the adjusters to raise the front end but the car still sits pretty low and there's not much more adjustability left in it. I could MAYBE raise it another 1/4" at MOST, but that's it. I love the looks, don't get me wrong, but I'm definitely going to have to take it easy driving over speed bumps etc. so I don't end up scraping something underneath the car.
Right now, the top of the front fender's are just a "tad" over 25 inch's off the ground. I was wondering, what other lowered C4 owners are running height wise, from the ground to the top of the fender. Anybody else this low? Lower?
More pic's to come once the brake line is fixed and the brake system's been blead and the car's been aligned and washed. The car's filthy having sat inside the garage all this time.
That's exactly how I got to this point...
What was originally planned as an afternoon job installing a new front spring, ended up turning into a complete front suspension overhaul.
It all started when I found one of the bolts in the driver side spring retainer was seized within the retainer itself. The nuts on the bottom of the bolts all came out easily enough, but this one single bolt just would not slide out of the retainer! Since the retainer's are what hold the spring in place and I couldn't pull the retainer free from the bolt, I couldn't slide out the spring!
To spare you all the boring details, let's just say I ended up having to remove just about everything on the drivers side, just to gain access to the retainer from the side. At that point, using my trusty breaker bar, I tried prying the retainer free from the corrosion that was holding it to the bolt.
I put so much force on the bar, I actually shattered the retainer into 4 pieces.
The funny part was that the bolt was still seized inside a chunk of the aluminium retainer and was still attached the frame. I could finally slide out the spring, but I still had to sawzall the bolt to get it out of the frame. At that point, all I could do was laugh.
Here's a picture of the bolt that seized up inside the retainer. I never did get it out, but at least I was able to pull off the retainer and slide out the spring. I was finally back on track.
At this point, I looked at my shock, control arm, bushings, nuts, bolts and everything else I'd removed and started finding more "things" that needed to be done. In a nutshell, things kind of got out of hand. I figured what the hell, all the parts were off anyway, may as well replace everything while I was at it.
..The spindles were removed, thoroughly cleaned, sanded and powder coated "silver vein".
..............The lower control arms were also cleaned, sanded down and powder coated the same "silver-vein" colour.
......After some thorough scrubbing with a scotchbrite pad, the spring protectors were good to go. New Del-A-Lum bushings will be replacing the old rubber ones in the lower control arms. The upper control arms will be replaced with SPC's "racing" version of their adjustable arms and new Timkin wheel bearings will replace the old stockers.
....The sway bar brackets were cleaned, sanded and then powder coated silver, as were the sway bar end-links. The new spring retainers were also powder coated and every single nut, bolt and washer will be upgraded with all new fasteners in either the same grade as the originals, or stronger if the option was available.
....Here's some shots of the new VB&P "extreme" adjustable spring compared to the stock spring. The new one should be a lot easier to install given the fact that it's straight as an arrow compared to the banana-shaped stock spring.
..Both upper and lower ball joints as well as the tie-rod ends will be replaced with new ones from Spicer.
..Finally, here some shots of the new QA1 adjustable shocks and the new 32mm sway bar from VB&P
..You can see in the second picture, the C5 front brake upgrade, 2 piece Baer rotors, and new wheels/tires. They were purchased a little while back and will be installed once everything starts going back together.
If anyone's interested in more pic's of the brakes, check the link in my sig for another thread I started about the brake upgrade. Over the next 2-3 weeks (hopefully), I'll be re-installing everything on the car and will update the thread again with my progress...
Stay tuned.
UPDATE:
With the front under-carriage thoroughly cleaned and degreased, the car's front end is now ready to start being assembled. All the suspension bits have been brought out to the garage and the project is finally starting to come together.
....UPDATE:
When I first got my spring from VB&P, I had no idea what these aluminium cylinder pieces were for or even where they went but after removing the factory spring and its related parts, it soon became obvious. These aluminium inserts are milled down the centre to hold the spring and keep it in place.
You can see in the picture that the pad on the spring has an extra line of rubber down its centre. That rubber slides into the milled section of the aluminium cylinder and keeps the spring from sliding around. If you look closely, you can see that the milled section of the cylinder is actually off-set to push the spring back further towards the firewall. This is done for clearance reasons.
These 2 cylinders simply sit inside the stock spring retainers and are held in place via 2 small bolts which go through the existing holes in the bottom of the stock retainer, and screw into the bottom of the aluminium cylinders. Finally, you can see what the retainers look like with the spring in place.
....UPDATE:
The Del-A-Lum bushing required the lower control arms to be drilled/tapped for grease fittings. I used a 7/32" bit to drill out the holes, then used 1/4x28 tap to create the threads. The fittings screwed in perfectly and after greasing up the new bushings, the lower arms are now ready to go on car.
........UPDATE:
The ball joints turned out to be every bit as much a pain in the butt as I thought they'd be and it took me a few hours to finally get them in. Of coarse, having a rental ball joint press that couldn't press anything down straight didn't help things either.
The threaded shaft that goes through the c-clamp and does all the pressing, was crooked and kept pushing the ball joint in crooked as well. I had to resort to pressing the ball joint in one side at a time and rotating back and forth from side to side. Once the ball joint was about 3/4 way in, I was finally able to press down on the centre of the ball joint to press it the rest of the way through.
Took me a while, but I finally got them both installed. Next time, I'll make it easier on myself and buy a hydraulic press. It'll be worth it.
..UPDATE:
After installing the front spring, I discovered that the outside edge of the spring on both passenger and driver side, was actually interfering with the sway bar end links on the lower control arms. After bringing up the issue with the folks over at VB&P, they gave me the option of either having a new spring sent out to me the following week, or I could keep the one I had now, and simply trim the edges of the spring for the required clearance. I was told that doing so would NOT void the warranty and since the spring is just fibreglass, I wouldn't be doing any damage to it at all by trimming it down.
I decided to just keep this one and go ahead and trim it down. The car's been on jack-stands long enough and I just want it back on the road. Big thanks to VB&P though, as they were very helpful and understanding of my situation and at least gave me the option of getting a new spring. Even though I chose to stick with the one I had, it's still nice knowing I at least had the option of getting a new one considering I'd bought this one so long ago. Big thanks to VB&P though for their customer service.
I decided to use a file to trim down the spring edges rather than a grinder, since I didn't want to risk removing more material than I needed. The job was surprisingly easy actually and once the ends were trimmed, I simply pained the exposed fibreglass with flat-black paint which matched the colour of the spring perfectly. You'd never know any work was done to them.
......UPDATE:
Moving onto the front sway bar, the first picture below shows how the "out of the box" end-link bushing assemblies end up being too "wide" to fit the end-links. Picture number 2 shows how much I ended up having to cut off the "thrust washer" to get the bushing assembly to fit properly. (To avoid any confusion, the black bushing is made by Prothane and came with the sway bar. The red one is by Energy suspension and was purchased prior to buying the sway bar. BOTH bushings were the same size originally, so ignore the colour difference. The picture's just to illustrate how much the bushing had to be cut down).
BIG thanks goes to forum member "FostersPerformance" for helping me figure out what had to be done to get these bushings to fit and on which sides of the sway bar they were supposed to be installed on.
The final two pictures are a close up of the newly cut-down thrust washer in place and finally, what the bushing assembly looks like with the end-link in place.
....UPDATE:
Here's where I'm at right now. The suspensions pretty much all put in at this point although I can't torque anything down until the car is level on the ground with the full weight of the front end sitting on the suspension. Before I do that, I still have to fix the brake line on the passenger side and install the front brakes. I'm finally starting to see the light at the end of this tunnel...
Stay tuned for more.
UPDATE:
Will be fixing the brake line this weekend, but in the meantime, I went ahead and torqued all the suspension bolts down to spec and threw on the new wheels/tires to see the car's new stance. At first, I tightened the adjusters all the way in, for maximum lowering affect but it turned out to be DANGEROUSLY low.
The front end sat so low that I couldn't even pull out my low-profile floor jack and the car still hadn't even fully settled onto the ground yet. I had to raise the front again, add ANOTHER set of 2x4's underneath the front tires to raise the front end so that it was about 4 inches off the ground. Finally, I was able to lower the car and pull out the jack . When I got up and walked over to the side of the car to see what everything looked like, I couldn't believe how low the front end was.
The top 3/4 inch of the tire was under the fender!!
I've never seen a C4 that low before and I had no idea these adjustable springs could lower a car so much. It looked cool as hell, but the reality is, I would have bottomed out just coming off the 2x4" sheets I had underneath the wheels, never mind exiting the driveway.
For safety's sake, I had to raise the car. I played around with the adjusters to raise the front end but the car still sits pretty low and there's not much more adjustability left in it. I could MAYBE raise it another 1/4" at MOST, but that's it. I love the looks, don't get me wrong, but I'm definitely going to have to take it easy driving over speed bumps etc. so I don't end up scraping something underneath the car.
Right now, the top of the front fender's are just a "tad" over 25 inch's off the ground. I was wondering, what other lowered C4 owners are running height wise, from the ground to the top of the fender. Anybody else this low? Lower?
More pic's to come once the brake line is fixed and the brake system's been blead and the car's been aligned and washed. The car's filthy having sat inside the garage all this time.
Last edited by LT1*C4; 09-09-2011 at 12:20 PM.
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C4ProjectCar (07-23-2018)
04-13-2011, 03:18 PM
#2
Le Mans Master
Member Since: Oct 2007
Location: Akron Ohio
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2023 C5 of the Year Finalist - Modified
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St. Jude Donor '09-'10-'11
Wow!! Big spender!
Everything looks great! I have the front of mine apart now too doing similar changes. What spring rate did you go with for the front?
Edit: Nevermind, I see K=950 written on the spring.
Big spender! Everything looks great! I have the front of mine apart now too doing similar changes.
What spring rate did you go with for the front?Edit: Nevermind, I see K=950 written on the spring.
04-13-2011, 03:30 PM
#3
Melting Slicks
Looks great! So far. Maybe next year I will do a complete suspension upgrade too! Let us know how it all turns out.
04-13-2011, 04:17 PM
#5
Le Mans Master
damn looking at your pics made me hear a voice that said ...hey sammy
"you haven't upgrade this parts" and i wanted them all !
Good job that's the way to go !!!!!!!
i will save this pics
"you haven't upgrade this parts" and i wanted them all !
Good job that's the way to go !!!!!!!
i will save this pics
04-13-2011, 05:42 PM
#6
Racer
Thread Starter
Yeah, the front spring rate is 950. The car remains my only means of transportation (it's the daily driver) and while my tolerance for a "stiff" riding suspension is much higher than most would find acceptable in a street car, at the same time, I didn't want to go "all out" and get the stiffest spring either.
I discussed the subject with VB&P and we came to the conclusion that a spring rate of 950 would be best suited for my needs and future goals with the car.
Originally, I was planning on doing things "a little bit at a time" - but since everything was already out, I just took the opportunity to get it all over with once and for all.
It wasn't until I actually had the control arms off the car that I realized just how rough a shape the stock rubber bushings really were. It's scary just how well these cars handle, even with worn bushings.
A buddy of mine last fall, went for a ride in my Vette and couldn't believe how great the car handled and insisted the suspension had been "modified". It was his first time in a C4 and needless to say, he was very impressed how the car went around corners for a nearly 20 year old car.
He saw the bushings I pulled out of the car last week and his jaw just about hit the floor. He couldn't believe the car felt as good as it did, riding on those old rubber bushings.
The new set-up is going to transform the car altogether. Can't wait.
Over the summer, I'll be upgrading the rear spring (have to discuss with VB&P which rate to go with on the rear), a 26mm sway bar and probably just stick with poly bushings for the stock suspension pieces. I know there are a number of after market rear suspension components for these cars but I really don't think I'm going to need all that "adjustability". I'll just powder-coat everything and go poly.
Of coarse, my mind could change by then, so anythings possible.
I discussed the subject with VB&P and we came to the conclusion that a spring rate of 950 would be best suited for my needs and future goals with the car.
Originally, I was planning on doing things "a little bit at a time" - but since everything was already out, I just took the opportunity to get it all over with once and for all.
It wasn't until I actually had the control arms off the car that I realized just how rough a shape the stock rubber bushings really were. It's scary just how well these cars handle, even with worn bushings.
A buddy of mine last fall, went for a ride in my Vette and couldn't believe how great the car handled and insisted the suspension had been "modified". It was his first time in a C4 and needless to say, he was very impressed how the car went around corners for a nearly 20 year old car.
He saw the bushings I pulled out of the car last week and his jaw just about hit the floor. He couldn't believe the car felt as good as it did, riding on those old rubber bushings.
The new set-up is going to transform the car altogether. Can't wait.
Over the summer, I'll be upgrading the rear spring (have to discuss with VB&P which rate to go with on the rear), a 26mm sway bar and probably just stick with poly bushings for the stock suspension pieces. I know there are a number of after market rear suspension components for these cars but I really don't think I'm going to need all that "adjustability". I'll just powder-coat everything and go poly.
Of coarse, my mind could change by then, so anythings possible.
Last edited by LT1*C4; 04-14-2011 at 12:59 AM.
04-13-2011, 06:23 PM
#8
Le Mans Master
Member Since: Oct 2007
Location: Akron Ohio
Posts: 8,855
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2023 C5 of the Year Finalist - Modified
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Yeah, the front spring rate is 950. The car remains my only means of transportation (it's a daily driver after all) and while my tolerance for a "stiff" riding suspension is much higher than most would find acceptable in a street car, at the same time, I didn't want to go "all out" and get the stiffest spring either.
I discussed the subject with VB&P and we came to the conclusion that a spring rate of 950 would be best suited for my needs and future goals with the car.
Originally, I was planning on doing things "a little bit at a time" - but since everything was already out, I just took the opportunity to get it all over with once and for all.
It wasn't until I actually had the control arms off the car that I realized just how rough a shape the stock rubber bushings really were. It's scary just how well these cars handle, even with worn bushings.
A buddy of mine last fall, went for a ride in my Vette and couldn't believe how great the car handled and insisted the suspension had been "modified". It was his first time in a C4 and needless to say, he was very impressed how the car went around corners for a nearly 20 year old car.
He saw the bushings I pulled out of the car last week and his jaw just about hit the floor. He couldn't believe the car felt as good as it did, riding on those old rubber bushings.
The new set-up is going to transform the car altogether. Can't wait.
Over the summer, I'll be upgrading the rear spring (have to discuss with VB&P which rate to go with on the rear), a 26mm sway bar and probably just stick with poly bushings for the stock suspension pieces. I know there are a number of after market rear suspension components for these cars but I really don't think I'm going to need all that "adjustability". I'll just powder-coat everything and go poly.
Of coarse, my mind could change by then, so anythings possible.
I discussed the subject with VB&P and we came to the conclusion that a spring rate of 950 would be best suited for my needs and future goals with the car.
Originally, I was planning on doing things "a little bit at a time" - but since everything was already out, I just took the opportunity to get it all over with once and for all.
It wasn't until I actually had the control arms off the car that I realized just how rough a shape the stock rubber bushings really were. It's scary just how well these cars handle, even with worn bushings.
A buddy of mine last fall, went for a ride in my Vette and couldn't believe how great the car handled and insisted the suspension had been "modified". It was his first time in a C4 and needless to say, he was very impressed how the car went around corners for a nearly 20 year old car.
He saw the bushings I pulled out of the car last week and his jaw just about hit the floor. He couldn't believe the car felt as good as it did, riding on those old rubber bushings.
The new set-up is going to transform the car altogether. Can't wait.
Over the summer, I'll be upgrading the rear spring (have to discuss with VB&P which rate to go with on the rear), a 26mm sway bar and probably just stick with poly bushings for the stock suspension pieces. I know there are a number of after market rear suspension components for these cars but I really don't think I'm going to need all that "adjustability". I'll just powder-coat everything and go poly.
Of coarse, my mind could change by then, so anythings possible.
I would look at the rear trailing arm/camber kit from Banski instead of doing the poly conversion. Its not just that they are more adjustable, but the joints allow smoother motion of the rear suspension. As the wheel moves in jounce and rebound it doesnt move straight up and down, but on an arch. Installing the poly in the stock arms will make the arms want to move more in a straight line and cause binding. The ease of adjustments is just another benefit.
Call and ask them.
04-13-2011, 08:34 PM
#11
Race Director
How much of a hassle was it to get that spring?When I got mine it was such a hassle swore Id never buy anything else from VB&P.
04-13-2011, 09:19 PM
#13
Racer
Thread Starter
The newer "Vettes feel just a little too civilized for me. With their soft, smooth rides, they feel like a Cadillac compared to the older C4's. It's very easy to forget you're even driving a sports car behind the wheel of a C5 unless you're pushing it to it's very limits on a race track. It's a pet-peeve of mine with a lot of the so called "sports cars" today. They may put down the numbers, but they're just a little too refined for my liking. Kind of boring to drive actually, when you're not going all-out. The C4's have a much more "raw" feel to them. Part of that "raw" feel in my opinion, is due to their stiff riding suspensions which really gives the driver a lot of feedback as to what's going on underneath them at all times. Hopefully, the new front suspension pieces will enhance that "raw" feel even more.
I would look at the rear trailing arm/camber kit from Banski instead of doing the poly conversion. Its not just that they are more adjustable, but the joints allow smoother motion of the rear suspension. As the wheel moves in jounce and rebound it doesnt move straight up and down, but on an arch. Installing the poly in the stock arms will make the arms want to move more in a straight line and cause binding. The ease of adjustments is just another benefit.
If I were married, you think I'd be allowed to buy any of this crap?
Happily single here and loving every minute of it.
I can' either. The weather's been great outside the past few day and I'm already seeing guy's bringing out their summer toys. I need to finish this the car up so I can start enjoying it again ASAP!
Last edited by LT1*C4; 04-26-2011 at 10:24 PM.
04-13-2011, 09:46 PM
#14
Melting Slicks
04-13-2011, 11:43 PM
#15
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2016 C7 of Year Finalist
St. Jude Donor '09-'10-'11-'12-'13-'14-'15-'16-'17-'18-'19-'20
Great thread. Wow you bought the Extreme Monospring. I got the sport and that one is stiff enough for me. Have fun, find some curvy roads and let us know how it works.
I noticed you painted the front knuckles, the part (square) where the bearing bolt on to needs to be paint free.
I noticed you painted the front knuckles, the part (square) where the bearing bolt on to needs to be paint free.
04-14-2011, 12:42 AM
#16
Racer
Thread Starter
In other words, the openings (whether it be on a control arm, a spindle, sway bar etc.) are just large enough to allow for a bushing (or in this case, a wheel bearing) to slide in perfectly snug without any play/slop. Even a thin layer of paint to the inside wall of an opening would be enough to prevent a bushing or bearing from sliding in. In some cases, the tolerances are so tight, that even a single millimeter of paint, would be enough to cause fitment issues.
The outside of the actual part itself can be powder-coated, no problem.
I know plenty of guy's who've powder coated just about every suspension part on their cars. Including spindles. Including the mounting surface where the wheel bearings attach to the spindles and have never had an issue. It's only the openings you have to be careful with.
Last edited by LT1*C4; 04-22-2011 at 02:32 AM.
04-14-2011, 01:28 PM
#17
Team Owner
Member Since: Aug 2005
Location: Riverside County Southern California
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Co-winner 2020 C4 of the Year - Modified
2018 Corvette of Year Finalist
2017 C4 of Year
2016 C7 of Year Finalist
St. Jude Donor '09-'10-'11-'12-'13-'14-'15-'16-'17-'18-'19-'20
The flat surface of the spindle can be powder coated without issue. The wheel bearing is held in place by sliding the unit right through the spindle itself and is secured in place with 4, 10.9 grade bolts. It ain't going nowhere regardless of whether or not the spindle's surface has been powder coated. It's the inside of the openings for components such as ball joints, bushings and wheel bearings that needs to be completely paint free and that's only because of the extremely tight tolerances of the openings themselves in regards to the components that are meant to fit in them.
In other words, the openings (whether it be on a control arm, a spindle, sway bar etc.) are just large enough to allow for a bushing (or in this case, a wheel bearing) to slide in perfectly snug without any play/slop. Even a thin layer of paint to the inside wall of an opening would be enough to prevent a bushing or bearing from sliding in. In some cases, the tolerances are so tight, that even a single millimeter of paint, would be enough to cause fitment issues.
The outside of the actual part itself can be powder-coated, no problem.
I know plenty of guy's who've powder coated just about every suspension part on their cars. Including spindles. Including the mounting surface of the wheel bearings on those spindles and have never had an issue. It's only the openings you have to be careful with.
In other words, the openings (whether it be on a control arm, a spindle, sway bar etc.) are just large enough to allow for a bushing (or in this case, a wheel bearing) to slide in perfectly snug without any play/slop. Even a thin layer of paint to the inside wall of an opening would be enough to prevent a bushing or bearing from sliding in. In some cases, the tolerances are so tight, that even a single millimeter of paint, would be enough to cause fitment issues.
The outside of the actual part itself can be powder-coated, no problem.
I know plenty of guy's who've powder coated just about every suspension part on their cars. Including spindles. Including the mounting surface of the wheel bearings on those spindles and have never had an issue. It's only the openings you have to be careful with.
04-27-2011, 10:34 AM
#20
Melting Slicks
that gives me an idea for a new reality tv show, 'extreme suspension makeovers'
surely that would have to be better than some of the rubbish on now ?
surely that would have to be better than some of the rubbish on now ?