Hi guys,

I just failed to pass an inspection in a foreign country due to the ground clearance. The car is lowered about an inch with ride-height adjustable coilovers and I need raise the car about .5 inch to pass the damn inspection.

A thing that concerns me is how the adjustment would affect the current suspension setting of my car. I just had the car re-aligned and corner-weighted, hence don't want go through that process again due to this.

I am guessing that if I leave marks at current height on the coilover and just raise it little bit and lower it back to where it was by using those marks, it should be o.k.??? Advice will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

If you change the height the toe and camber settings tend to change but if you mark the coilovers and lower them back to their original settings the alignment settings will come back into spec. Short answer, yes you will be fine.

 

Ya what he said. mark them and stick it to the Man.

 

dam that's crazy,i heard that they will not pass you if you have any rust on your car in germany...

 

I think that will work to an extent. I would not expect it to be totally perfect again, but it's better than nothing. sorry that sucks since you just shelled out to get it all dialed.

 

What makes you think that? Have you had an experience where it didn't work?

 

In the past I have had coilovers at a certain height, had it aligned, then raised the car for a little while, and put it back down to where it was before, and the alignment had changed a little, and that didn't even include corner balancing. Could have just been my deal that time though? It can just be tricky to get it back exactly to how it was. If you are confident it's going to be 100% back to the exact same alignment and corner balance numbers, great! That's good news and I guess I can get away with doing the same thing too in the future.

 

Count the turns on the spring perch. Write it down. Then undo it. And it still won't be perfect. Although alignments are a tricky thing. I've done an alignment, pulled the car off the rack, immediately put it back on, and the alignment numbers were different. Just don't drive too far with it adjusted up. Your toe will be all out of whack and you'll destroy your tires.

 

What GTLocke13 said. You can drive the car onto an alignment rack, set it drive off and drive back on again and your alignment will be slightly different. These things are never perfect, even a strong gust of wind can alter the readings. You have to mark things and then either measure or count the number of turns to get them back. Maybe you didn't exactly mark them accordingly when you raised and lowered you car?

 

Yeah that's probably what it was. I tried to be as close as possible, but I'm sure it wasn't exact.