cwlovell

We're heading into winter and I would like to use the next few months of p-car downtime to raise my lowered '86 911 Coupe. Can anyone steer me clear as to whether I can do this myself (I'm a fearless amateur wrench ... talk about dangerous!) or whether the $600-800 quoted is worth it. I know I will have to get an alignment and reweighting but can I do the bulk of the heavy lifting.
Thanks.

Bill Gregory

The front is raised by the vertical bolt at the end of the torsion bars rear most portion closest to the driver. Easy. Rears, if the adjustment is 1/2" or less, can possibly be adjusted on the swing plate. If there's not enough room, ie. they are already adjusted to the max, then you need to pull the swing plate off the torsion bar and reindex it. Tedious, but not impossible. Adjusting the front does not require a realignment. With the rears you may want to consider a realignment. In any event, a corner balance will be in order.

cwlovell

I'll do some real due diligence on working with the rear torsion bars before I try the raising routine. Maybe the 1/2" all around will do it. Will new shocks raise the ride height? I would think not but it can't hurt to ask.

Stephen Masraum

Bill, I thought raising or lowering our cars could potentially require a realignment because toe will be changed as well as camber. Camber might not be a big deal for the average person, but toe could be, right? Not arguing, just asking.

Hugh

When I got my car it was low low low. Except for getting in and out of the driveway, I thought that was pretty cool. But then I had the car aligned, corner weighted and set to "Euro" spec ride height, proper rake, etc... all of which amounted to un-lowering the car. Oh my, it was a HUGE IMPROVEMENT! The handling improved immensely and it took a good couple weeks or so until I found the new point at which it would break traction, which was a LOT further out than before.

I bet there's plenty of this that you can do on your own (setting the height, anyway), but based on my one experience, I'd definitely recommend getting the alignment done.

Cheers