How to cheaply adjust coilovers the right way. ����By Ben Ogle

I have seen a few threads asking how to adjust your coilovers so the car looks even all the way around and a lot of people said "measure from the ground to the top of the wheel well." Well, that is only half right. It is possible to have them completely equal looking but not distributing the weight evenly. If messed up bad enough the heights will look even but almost all the weight is on opposite corners. So here's a way to make sure they are pretty even. Its about as close to corner weighting as you can get with out actually doing it. It, of course, isn't quite as good as corner weighting but you are cheap, remember?

When we put shocks on my civic we had trouble getting the heights even. You know how it goes: left front is too high, so you lower it and mess up the rest of the heights and so on. What we saw when we would jack up either end (F or R) was that one tire would leave the ground like 3" before the other side. We figured that wasn't a good thing. Even with all the heights the same if we jacked it up in the middle of, say, the front, one back tire would squat a hell of a lot more than the other.

So what you do to get them all even is first find a flat place to do this, a friend and some time. Then take the car out of gear and take the parking brake off. It's important to note that you should not worry about the heights being off when the car is sitting on all fours, it'll all come together when they are even side to side.

Jack up one end (pick one, chief) and make sure both tires are off the ground, then measure from the ground to the top of the wheel well of the wheels touching the ground. If its different raise or lower half the distance of the difference (say the LF is 24" and the RF is 24 1/2" you would raise the LF 1/4" or lower the RF 1/4").

What we did to adjust them was: lower the jack, move it to the end that needs adjusting, Jack it up, adjust, let it down, roll the car back and fourth (to seat the tires) then jack up the original end. Repeat all that until one end is all equal from side to side then move to the other end and do the same thing.

Once your car is weighted mostly equal (you'll never get it as good as corner weighting) your heights on all 4s should be very equal and you can adjust your heights by counting the turns on each coilover. Then you check the lateral weight again (by jacking up one end and measuring the opposite) and you're done. If you drive a lot by your self do this with someone your weight in the drivers seat, but if you autocross with people in the car you can do it with no one sitting in it.

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