mikehayes

Hey guys, I'm taking a break from my engine rebuild while I wait for some parts, so I figured I'd paint my new front valence. The old one is cracked and bent and paint chipped. I always thought it was the reason that my car looked like it was listing to one side, but today I measured it, and it's half an inch higher on the driver's side. The condition existed before and after I installed lowering springs and koni adjustables up front. Any ideas what could cause this? I suppose I could slap some washers somewhere to level it but I'd like to know the cause.

V2Rocket

1) how do your strut mounts look?
2) are the control arms and tie rods parallel to the ground on both sides?
3) for fun, get in the driver seat and have someone else measure the ride height again and see if it levels out..maybe Porsche builds em tilted to compensate for the driver

mikehayes

The tie rod ends are at different heights. How is this possible? I checked my tire pressure and they're off by a bit, but not enough to cause the difference I saw. The only thing I can think is that one hub is at a different angle (rotated around the wheel's axis) than the other, but that shouldn't be possible either right?

V2Rocket

itd be pretty noticeable camber to get a 1/2".

assuming all the other parts are correct and match, i suspect your upper strut mount bushing/donuts may need replacement. if that is indeed the case, luckily you can use a replacement for a 1988 volkswagen FOX which is about $12 each vs the 944 part number at over $100.

youre this far into it...whats a little more time to pull the front struts

thomasmryan

raise the rear passenger side.

measure pick up points of the suspension components as the body assembly does have tolerances. the wsm has the specs

951and944S

Could be the angle of your photo but it looks like the RF tire is way further forward in relation to the fender.

Could be caster is adjusted wrong (on both sides).

Imagine your shoulder is the top strut mount. With your arms hanging to your side making a fist, your hand is the spindle at -0- caster. As you move your fist forward, you are moving towards what would be maximum caster adjustment.
As your fist moves forward, it raises in height which would lower that side of the car.

Look under car at rear a-arm and note position of the adjustment tab and report back what clock position they are in with 6'oclock being straight down.

T

MAGK944

That's not a good point of reference for measurement, first you should find out which side is too high or too low from a factory reference point.

See if "X" is the same both sides, then make sure your control arms are parallel +/- 10mm. If you find things are out you can adjust the eccentrics at the rear to raise or lower the front accordingly.

Obviously what others have said about all the bushes and bearings being serviceable and tire pressures being equal applies before any measurements are taken.

V2Rocket

man, P sure gives us all the important ****, huh?

try finding diagrams like that for a subaru...that wasnt drawn by the aftermarket

jtedgar

You should measure height for the car with the driver in seat. The car could have been corner weighted with ride height compensation for the weight of the driver. The car should be relatively level with the driver in the car.

MAGK944

Not the case, the bodywork heights are usually all over the place after a corner balance. Corner balancing doesn't care about the fenders all being stanced right, simply that the weight on each wheel is balanced. Yes it's with driver and 1/2 tank of gas but this isn't a race car so I don't think it's the problem here.

951and944S

100% correct.

An earlier poster mentioned further loading the diagonal rear wheel which is possible with the torsion bar and could very well solve his problem if it's not a jacked up caster setting.

But you are right also about measuring points. You'd be surprised (or maybe not since you mentioned tracking a car) at the amount of people that ask me at the track what my ride height is as measured from the fender arches.

I just laugh and say "I don't know" so they automatically think they should seek advice elsewhere even though my car/driver is P1....

Here's what I use for accuracy, a regular tape is useless, not accurate enough.



Alternatively, when I am 100% set on ride height after testing and adjusting, I'll make some custom go/no go blocks that slide under the factory points with -0- clearance.
I keep these in the track tool cart.
If a driver comes in and reports a handling problem, you have to know what your base settings are/were to start there and verify to rule out an adjustment that may have moved.

T

mikehayes

Wheels are turned toward driver side.

This was my first thought when I noticed that one tie rod end was lower than the other. In fact, I know that my front caster is out of spec on one side, because the sheet read that way when I got my last alignment, but I was told (by someone who doesn't know anything about 944's) that if they left it that way it probably wasn't adjustable, so I didn't look into it. I'll check it out!

The first thing I measured was X. If I remember correctly they differed by at least 15mm. I recently installed larger torsion bars and koni's in the back, and I indexed them so that the back was perfectly level. I never corner balanced it because I didn't have access to scales. I'd say that indexing the back caused this problem, but I distinctly remember noticing it before I did the suspension overhaul.

If it was corner balanced before, it certainly isn't anymore after I did my new suspension.

Question: I have a 26.8mm sway bar up front. Could it be affecting anything here?

MAGK944

Yes agreed, indexing the rear will cause the front to raise or lower. One side of the front may have been off before and has been exaggerated further by the indexing. Its best to use the front and rear factory reference points for measuring height, the body panels are notoriously out of kilter. As an example, on both my cars the rear wheels have noticeably different spacing into the wheel wells and I know everything is new and straight back there.

The sway bar should not make a difference unless one control arm is higher than the other, in which case it could induce some pre-load affecting the other arm. Unfortunately you cannot adjust pre-load on the stock arms, so if you are worried about it affecting measurements, simply unwind the bolt on one of the drop links until it has no effect.