Old Mar 24, 2011 | 01:48 PM
  #4  
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mdb20
Marky Mark B.
 
Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 74
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From: NE Kansas (KC Metro Area)
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I had the correct parts on the car for the front and the rear. It's nearly impossible to get them mixed up since the front and rear springs look quite a bit different. The front springs seem to be stiffer too. I rechecked the front springs/shocks to make sure they were preloaded correctly with a jack while off the ground on a jackstand. This was advised by Eibach Tech to make sure that the vehicle sat at the correct height and was level. I didn't see a noticeable improvement from doing this however. I came to the conclusion that the back had to be sitting way too low. I looked at the parts breakdown again, since I was using some original OE parts and some Eibach parts in the assembly process. I noticed that there was an approx 1" tall metal collar that I must have removed and not reinstalled with the new rubber upper bushing from Eibach. The front shock assembly collars stayed in the upper mounts and weren't removed separately like the rear. After removing the main top shock nut and utilizing the Eibach supplied upper rubber bushing and collar, this seemed to solve the ride height issue. Without the metal collar (spacer) and new bushing, the vehicle seemed to be sitting about 1 1/2" too low or almost 3" in total drop which explains the slammed look. This was kind of an amateur move on my part, but seeing that the work was done over the course of a week due to a broken head on a lower control arm bushing bolt, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised when working on a 17 year old car with stock rusted suspension components and hardware. The rear still seems to sit a little bit lower than the front, but I'm pretty sure that it did when the car was at the stock ride height as well. It's definitely at a more realistic ride height than before.
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