Lowering the front end of my 66 Satellite

[moparchick66]

I heard that in order to lower the front end of most mopars all I need to do is tighten the torsion bars to the preferred setting. Can anyone tell me if this is all I need to do? Thanks

[72Challenger]

There's an adjuster bolt in the bottom of the lower control arm. FIRST TAKE THE WEIGHT OFF THE SUSPENSION. Never adjust the arms without jacking the car up by the frame rails. Then loosen the adjuster bolt to lower, tighten to raise. Lower the car back down, bounce the front end a couple times to settle everything, then carefully measure to make sure both sides are equal.

Be sure to get an alignment after doing this, and don't lower by more than 1 or at most 2 inches.

[George G. Leverette]

The service manual recommends all suspension adjustments be made with the suspension under load. Ride height should be made to factory specifications for safe handling and durability of suspension parts. The car attitude can be safely changed by using one size smalle on the front of the vehicle, Chrysler was the pioneer of this concept and was the first to install them from the factory. Keep your car on the road.

[caveman]

Lowering a 1' or 2' max will be OK,dont go nuts,oil pan tend to hit things in the road when going too far.

[mtrv8n]

You'd be better off raising the rear..just put on taller tires!

[mauve66]

I've been wondering this ever since I rebuilt the front end on my 66 Charger. The service manual says to measure the front height before taking the torsion bars out for replacement but NOWHERE in the manual can I find the recomended height for the front end. Also, if you don't have the original size tires on the front end this measurement won't do anything for you. Any ideas for figuring this out other than the "lower it till the speed bump makes the oil pan protest" method??

[dodgepu360]

mauve66, I have a '66 charger too I would like to see a pic of yours
Im no expert but I think when I do the front end on mine I will set the height where it looks good and then have the front end aligned

here is a pic of mine it is not to pretty but me and my dad are working on that

[icycleboy]

I just set the height of my 69 Satellite wagon, and yes, getting it set properly can be a real pain. As I recall, the factory spec is the difference between two measuring points on the lower control arm, but I never could figure it out. Instead I used a tape measure and set it to create a metering rod which could stand on the ground by itself. The best place to measure is right under the center axis of the control arm. Start on one side, set the car to where you think it looks good, fix the tape measure. Now move it to the other side and adjust the height, jouncing the car as you get it to just touch the tip of the tape measure. Test drive the car. Measure again. It will have sagged a little. Repeat the cycle until you think its right. Now its time to take it to a really good mopar-savvy alignnment store to set everyting else to specs, and I can tell you of a few whom to avoid in the L.A. area. Fortunately, I just got hooked up with a gentleman at Stokes Tire Pros in Santa Monica who really knows his s#$%.

You can lower your front quite a bit with a combination of less ride height and a lower profile tire, making your Satellite look cooler and handle better. DON'T RAISE THE BACK. IT WILL KILL HANDLING and make you look like a redneck. I run headers, drive every day and hit my 1 1/4" sway bar into every parking barrier there is. Actually considering flipping over the rear spring shackle and lower the rear too. To make that work in an urban context, you would have to learn the diagonal speed bump traversing technique.

[Ausydad]

I've done plenty of alignments on my "A" bodies and have always come up with the same for front end height. The book tells us to measure the inside point of the lower control arm where it meets with the "K" member ( in that little notch type area) and again just outside the lower ball joint. There should be a 1 5/8" difference between these two measures ( on a level floor of course) to have proper geometry for the lower control arm and suspension in general. NOWHERE does it acutally give a height from the ground to the chassis. That's one of the beauties of Ma's suspensions. Do it your self at home your way!

[charger_dan]

When setting up front end ride height, I'll do one side how I want it,
then fashion a simple height gauge from spare cardboard. 3-4" wide x
9-10" tall is a good starting point. Use thick cardboard that has
no bow to it.

The gauge is held upright on the ground by hand, under the adjusted side,
and the height of gauge is trimmed until it just slips under a chosen
point on front suspension.

Now take your gauge and adjust other side of car to match.

It's not NASA-level stuff, but it works great.

[Devilbrad]

Hey moparchick!!! The lowering is easy. I had a 69 Dart slant six, we took it WAAAAY down in the front, lowering blocks in the rear, low proifle tires, damn that thing handled good!!!! I'm about to lower the front of my 66 Coronet as soon as the wheels come in and I get the new tires on em. I dont live very far if you wanna come watch and learn, should be next week or so. Also theres an awesome alignment shop in Moutain View called Performance Alignment, they did all our Porsche street/road race work for the place I used to work for, very quality work, racer owned, they care about their job.

Brad

[mauve66]

dodgepu360 - the only pic I have is on my home page at the bottom of my signature.................
I just realized that you couldn't click on it or copy it so you can go to it........
if you look in the web links page and ddo a search for Charger it should come up.......
I have a web page address saved but don't have the site up yet...........

[Locke]

Back in the day when I SOLO II raced my 71 cuda I had the front end wayyy low. The only way to make it low, safe and handle well is to have an alignment shop help you out. Find someone who knows what their doing and get the caster, camber and toe right. When you drop it from factory these all go out of wack. I adjusted mine for max handling which was tough on the tires but I would alway trailer it. Back to the shop and adjust it for the street and my tires would survive to roll another day.

Have fun

[cuda66273]

You can crank and twist on the torsion bars all you want but remember that as you ajust the bars your changing the front to rear and cross weights.

Incorrect cross weights can load one rear tire or take away weight transfer to one.....now that should open up some ideas for you peg leg rear end guy's......

If you had your car on a scale as you cranked on the bars you'd see how the weights change, once off the scale and under acceleration these numbers are drastically exagerated by engine tork and weight transfer as the front end comes up. You can see this just by putting a jack under the front end and watching the scale as you bring up the front end.

[Devilbrad]

Exactly right!!! We used to four corner scale the Porsches, set the ride weight (with driver in drivers seat!!!!), then send it out for alignment (with equivalent weight of driver in seat). And then double check the corner weights when it came back. We eventually designed our own tool for measuring camber and caster on the vehicle, on the ground, at any given time or place. If interested, I can get you some contact info for the company. Lots of people assume that if the ride height is same left and right, that car is fine, not true. Check them corner weights!! As for drag racing, it has its advatages also!!! If memory seves me correctly (if not, its all in the Mopar Chassis Manual) raising left front will put more weight on right rear, and vice-a-versa.

Brad

P.S. Cuda, is there anything about Mopars you dont know about????????

[cuda66273]

"raising left front will put more weight on right rear, and vice-a-versa."

Correct, for every action on a chassis there is a an equal and diagonnally oposite reaction.....


"P.S. Cuda, is there anything about Mopars you dont know about????????"

Yes....I'm clueless on A/C, radios, Wiper Motors, power seats, power windows, cruise control and original wiring harness'...so I just cut or sawzall out all that stuff and file it in the big blue metal box outside the shop.... ...it dissappears every weds. morning.....amazing how that happens?

I want you to look carefully at this picture, look at the bite we're getting from the left rear hide.....now look at the profile on the RR, see how it's so full and round....like my X-wife...

We were messing with the RF shock and torsion bar trying to get a base line on LR wieght transfer...obviously we backed it off a little too far..anyhow it shows a good example of what your car shouldn't be doing. Look close and you can see the spring separation.