edumak

Thanks! I think I got all the information I needed.

That never happened when I was trying to adjust the height or preload. The only time that happened was when I loosened the spring so much that there was no compression left so I could just free-spin it around.

s2000Junky

If you were rubbing the fender with the tire, adjusting for more pre load to raise the car will not totally alleviate the chance of the tire rubbing again since you have not changed the bump stop position in the stroke range, but rather just increase the level of impact it will take to repeat the same problem. In order to remove the chance of tire contact entirely you need a better alignment or fitting wheel, or worst case remove bump stroke all together, by taking spring rate out so its closer to the bump stop and then raise the ride height superficially via shock body by the lower lock ring, and you only need to un weight the car a little on that corner to do so, no need to remove anything. Just take some weight off the wheel to allow you to turn the upper shock body by hand. What your effectively doing here is shortening your upstroke travel and lengthening your droop travel with the net effect of same as current ride height with limited up travel to prevent rubbing or slight increase in ride height as well, just depends on how far you need to adjust to reach your goal of not rubbing.

b_ron

Here's a good reference on that part as well (at 1:10)

edumak

My problem is that once I set the preload and try to adjust the height, I can't get the top two rings and spring to spin together, which messes up the preload again.

edumak

I set the preload the lock the top two rings. Then I loosen the bottom ring to adjust the height. When I'm turning one of the top two rings to adjust height (top two rings still locked), the spring doesn't turn. The top two rings and the shaft turns.

freetors

In an ideal world ride height would always be set by adjusting the length of the shock and the preload would be set such that the dampers stroke is in the position that you want for adequate bump/droop travel.

B serious

Yes....the entire body will turn. The spring may or may not turn.

Counting from the top.

Lock rings #1&2 together tight. Make sure ring #3 is loose.

Put the wrench on ring #1. Turn the wrench CLOCKWISE (looking from the top of the car) to turn the body INTO the bottom bracket and lower the car.

Put the wrench on ring #2. Turn the wrench turn COUNTER CLOCKWISE (looking from the top of the car) to turn the body OUT of the bottom bracket and raise the car.

The whole body will turn. Its like a screw. The bottom bracket is like a nut. The rings are like jam nuts.

s2000Junky

If you use a wrench on the top rings to spin the entire body, there is a chance you could end up turning those by mistake and messing up your pre load inadvertently loosing up the middle ring, which is why I suggested grabbing the entire unit by hand and spinning it, but in order to do this you need to take some of the weight off by jacking the car up to neutralize the weight of the car and weight of the wheel.

B serious

The way I suggested would jam the rings against each other as you turn. That's why I picked a particular ring to go in a particular direction.

Imagine extracting or installing an exhaust manifold stud. You use 2 jam nuts. You wrench on a particular jam nut to go a particular direction.

They wont spin. I've been doing this since dinosaurs used to use coilover fossils to fuel their cars.

edumak

Yep that's the way I've been doing it since the beginning. When doing that, everything turns except for the spring. This cause the spring length to change (decrease when I raise the car and increase when I lower the car). But from you first post on the previous page, you said that it's normal for the spring length to change as you're adjusting height and won't affect preload?

If I lock up the top two rings, loosen third ring, and try to turn the whole top assembly (top two rings and spring) by hand to adjust height (raise car), I can only get about two turns. Then it gets stuck.

I've seen people easily do that in all the videos I've seen, but it's impossible to do it in my case unless I was Superman or something.