458 Adjusting ride height (namely lowering the car): shocks off?

I just lowered my 488s on stock coils. You definitely do not have to remove the shocks but the hard thing is getting the jam nuts loose with the shocks on the car but it can be done. The other hard part is that the coils put a lot of pressure on the jam nut so I took spring compressors and pulled some of the tension off of the coils so that I could easily turn the adjusters. It took me about two hours to do the whole job. Wheel spacers really help enhance the look also. Image Unavailable, Please Login

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Never seen or heard of a Ferrari shop removing the shocks to do it. It would also make it a ridiculous time consuming task to set ride height. It is not uncommon for dealers to do this prior to delivery. It is often a question of a bit here, measure, a bit there, measure and so forth. But especially on a car with miles on it and dirty shocks, use spring compressors. It is easy to damage the threads when the collar is under tension.

One thing to think about. You should really do this at a place with a four point scale. The car might sit level and look right, but the corner weight might very well be way off.

After getting the height and balance right, you need a full allignment of both front and rear.

The corner balance is a pet peeve of mine. Shops do a lot of lowering, and rave about how great it looks. But while the car may sit level, that's not the same as the balance being right. What good does it do lowering it, if the front to rear and side to side balance is all screwed up. Sometimes three quarters of a turn is hardly measurable in terms of height, but the difference in weight transferred to that wheel can be significant.

 

You can do it with the shocks in place, but you run the risk of destroying the shock. The spring perch and locking ring thread onto an aluminum threaded collar that is slid onto the outside of the shock tube during its manufacture. This threaded collar is not secured to the shock, so it can just spin on the outside of the shock, although it has some round holes in the lower portion that you might be able to fabricate a tool to hold it from turning.

I have seen the spring perch and locking ring gall the threads on this collar and seize to the collar multiple times. Once this happens the shock is junk and must be replaced with a new shock, as the collar cannot be removed from the shock.

I always blow all of the rocks out of the shock at the lower perch, clean the threads and use a good lubricant to keep the threads from galling. I have never had the rings seize on me, but I have seen it happen to many other technicians. Now I remove the shocks to take the load off of the spring before adjusting the ride height. Once the threads are cleaned and lubricated, I will make fine adjustments with the shocks on the car.

If you do it on the car, use a spring compressor, clean and lubricate the shock threads.

Brian Brown
San Francisco Motorsports

 

I went to the local car parts store and bought a pair of spring compressors taking all the tension off of the spring allows the adjuster to move very easily Image Unavailable, Please Login

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unfortunately the double hook compressor won't work it's designed to go up the center of the spring and you have to take the spring off for that to work so you have to use one on each side of the spring I did get those compressors up in there with the springs on the car but it is a tight fit

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What spring compressor worked for you??