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Post by roy on Oct 31, 2010 11:40:34 GMT -5
On a hard road bump, i think my new front springs are bottoming out. Just a quick back story, we installed the Fatman front coil overs/rack & pinion kit but, the 62 sat way to high in front for me. (The stock old suspension, from Eaton detroit was almost 4" lower than stock). so, we pulled the supplied QA-1 coil over springs(14"-250's) & went with a QA-1's 12"-225's which dropped her over 2" & with low profile tires we have the right stance back. But, hit a good sized bump & WACK! sounds like metal on metal, or to me, the springs colllapsing on themselves. I;ve looked around under there & i can;t see any other explanation & we didn;t drive her with the 14" springs to know if these new 12"s are the cause. We did note that the height adjusters were wound up alomst to halfway, so last night we dropped the adjusters down, about 1.5", my theory being this will give the spring more travel before they go into bind. Oddly, i did note the height of fender lip to ground before we wound the adjusters down 1-2"s & the ride height has hardly dropped at all, maybe 1/4". Now, if the rain will stop we can test ourt theory!
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Post by w2zero on Oct 31, 2010 12:41:17 GMT -5
What does the Fatman kit do to replace the rubber bump stops?
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Post by johnc118 on Oct 31, 2010 21:41:44 GMT -5
Get on the fairlane forums and call fatman.
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Post by roy on Nov 1, 2010 10:09:51 GMT -5
I;ve talked to Fatman, Brett is actually very helpful, he says, you just have to use the supplied 14"-250 QA-1's & it won;t bottom out. But, as i said, i don;t want my front end at stock ride height The only way around this, i think, is go back to the supplied QA-1's & order the dropped spindles from RaceCraft, another 600 bucks! Bump stop, nope, no bump stops & i'm not sure, with coil overs, where you would locate them. I did get out yesterday, & she rides & corners just amazingly well, i had to look for a good bump & i found one, a repair running across the road, i hit it at about 20mph & WACK!! It happens so quickly, i feel like the spring couldn;t collapse this quickly, but ,d**n, i;ve looked at everything under her for marks, or rubbing the only thing it might be, i do have a very thick sway bar on her, & it where it crosses the frame, its like 1/4" away from the outer frame edge, could this wack the frame on a bad bump? I also noticed, they mount out of wack, the ends do not sit vertically over the lower A arm mounting holes, quite an angle from end of bar, down to mounting hole in A-arm plate, gotta fix this. The sun is shinning, so i'm going to loosen it off the sway bar & find that bump, what i need is one of those little mini video cameras to mount under her!
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Post by w2zero on Nov 1, 2010 14:36:14 GMT -5
Swaybar might be the culprit. I would calc the distance to spring bind and see where that put the metal bits of the suspension. If it is easy enough to just pull the springs, then I would remove them and use a jack to find the limits of travel and what is hitting. There should be marks wherever you are making contact. When I am setting up my mountain bike suspension I have to account for coil bind and shock travel.
Yeah, mountain bikes. Noleen shocks are the real deal and they come with urethane bumpers to cushion the limits of a big hit. If you are on the stops a lot, something is going to bend or break.
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Post by Meteorgirl on Nov 1, 2010 15:01:12 GMT -5
You could always put some little pieces of strip caulk (or dum-dum like Ford called it) in between each coil of springs. Take it for a drive. It will show if they came together and by how much. A little ball on each side between each coil should do it.
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Post by Rob on Nov 2, 2010 13:16:33 GMT -5
Dum dum. I've solved many a problem with it.
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Post by roy on Nov 3, 2010 10:32:40 GMT -5
Dum,dum!! worth a try, I;ve got a feleling its not the springs, it just happens so quickly & only on a bad bump, but i;ve crawled around looking for marks, header bumps, X-member gettin hit, I;m going to pull sway bar right now, As you say, its such a WACK, like someone hitting metal with a sledge hammer that i'm afraid something is gonnas give! It actually feels like its under the car, meaning under the floor at least the bump that causes all this is 3 minutes from my house. Stay tuned
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Post by roy on Nov 11, 2010 10:34:36 GMT -5
An update- I was beginning to think ,because my car is 4" lower than stock, the fatman coil over/rack & pinion kit wasn;t a good buy, Thankfully, we found the noise problem The spring didn;t have enough tension on it, so it was littleraly jumping off the adjuster & then banging down on it, making that WACK! noise. We simply gave 3 more turns to the adjuster on the bottom of each coil over, putting more tension on the QA-1's, it did raise the front end, maybe 1/2", hardly noticeable. We ran her around Mosport track last night, the only noise from the car? My passenger screaming as we took corner 1 at 95mph!! Rides, corners like the GTO now, well, almost
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