suspension question - raising ride height

[drew at scirocco.cs.uoguelph.ca (Drew MacPherson)]

Thanks Dan.  I never get Cheapss Drew, because usually I go the opposite 
way.  However, of late I've found myself in the unfortunate situation of 
having a strict budget to keep a 19 year-old car rolling May-Dec 600+ 
miles a week, and a 17-year old car rolling Dec-May 600+ miles a week.  So 
now I could be known as "keep it under budget" Drew.

Drew

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, Dan Bubb wrote:

> I can't think of any reason you can't just put a spacer between the strut bearing and the body. But, I would think an alignment check would be in order.
> In my experience knocking the studs out of the strut bearings is really easy(too easy!).
> You do have a little cheapy camber gauge and know the parallel string trick for setting toe??
> Dan
> PS. does anybody refer to you as "cheapass Drew"?
>   ----- Original Message ----- 
>   From: Drew MacPherson 
>   To: scirocco-l@scirocco.org 
>   Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 12:38 PM
>   Subject: suspension question - raising ride height
> 
> 
> 
>   All this talk about suspensions and lowering reminded me of a question I 
>   was going to put to the list.
> 
>   Currently I have Neuspeed soft-sports (or something like that) on my 
>   Scirocco - the overall drop is nice - works on the crappy roads that I 
>   drive on, but takes care of that ugly gap between the top of the tire and 
>   the fender lip.
> 
>   There is a (slim) chance that I may be driving my Scirocco through the 
>   winter, when lowered is bad, and raised is good.  If I end up having to go 
>   this route, I need to get the car back up to stock ride height (or higher, 
>   preferably) with as little effort (and no cost) as possible.
> 
>   Raising the rear is not an issue - I can either reinstall the stock
>   springs, or shim the lower spring perch up (inner races from rear wheel
>   bearings work well for this)  without too much effort.
> 
>   The front, however poses an issue - reinstalling the stock springs means
>   the potential for messing up the alignment, plus having to muck with 
>   spring compressors etc.
> 
>   The only thing I can thing of that doesn't involve mucking with replacing 
>   of the front springs would be to install a shim between the strut bearing 
>   and the body of the car.  In order to be effective, it would probably have 
>   to be around an inch thick, which would mean longer strut bearing bolts 
>   would be required (not an issue as long as knocking the old ones out isn't 
>   that hard to do.)
> 
>   Does this sound doable?  I'd be concerned if it will have drastic effects 
>   on the car's handling (to the point of being dangerous.)  The goal is to 
>   significantly increase ground clearance (to get through the snow, eh?)  
>   and I don't mind giving up some handling, afterall, it is winter, and dry 
>   pavement is pretty hard to come by... :)
> 
>   Comments?  Suggestions (no, I will not consider buying a sport brUte, 
>   nor, unfortunately, can I move to California.)
> 
>   Drew
> 
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|    http://scirocco.cs.uoguelph.ca/gtd       |
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