I recently changed my bushings , shocks and springs. In the rear I used OEM compensator arm and rear trailing bushings. The lower control arm and upper shock mounting bushings are Energy suspension and the upper control arm bushings were not changed. Shocks are KYB AGX and the springs are Eibach Pro-kit.

Installation went fine , and all bolts were torqued to spec. However , when I test drove the car it makes really loud knocking noises from the rear suspension when going over pretty much any hole in the ground , be it small or large.

So I drive the car back in the garage to jack it up and have a look.
The first thing I notice is that the rear suspensiopn pretty much does not unload while jacking up the rear.

In this picture you see the wheel gap with the car on the ground :



This picture shows the car with the rear wheels off the ground :



As you can see the wheel has only moved like 5 mm/0.2 inches. Is this normal for a lowered car ? I´ve never owned a lowered car before , but this seems wrong to me.
I also tried to jack up the lower control arm with the wheel off , but that just lifted the car off the jackstand and the suspension pretty much did not move.

Car lifts right off with no suspension movement:


To me it seems that I have almost no suspension travel in the rear. I also noticed that the soft part of the progressive rear springs are all completely compressed all the time as can be seen in this picture :


I´m pretty sure the stock springs weren´t like this , and I really don´t think it should be this way since it would render the progressive part of the springs useless.

Here´s a general view of what the rear suspension looks like:


It seems to me that something is binding somewhere in the rear , but I don´t know what is normal with a lowered car since I´ve never owned one before.
Please someone help me with this. I´m getting really annoyed with this car. First the front suspension was all f****d up because of a bent knuckle , and now this happens

 

Could be that your exhaust is hitting your LCA on the passenger side. My exhaust did the same thing when i hit bumps. The exhaust hangs in the same place but the LCA is closer to it so when you hit a bump it might hit the exhaust piping.

 

Hey anyone want to buy some Ingalls Camber kits for the front of the car? They work perfect for cars lowered about 2''. Price is $40 for all 4 for the front.

 

I cant wait till the tein ss dampers go on the rex. Im gonna slam that biatch down to the ground

 

that is definately NOT right. Call eibach, may have a collapsed spring.

 

The spring looks fine & has nothing to do with the suspension not dropping.

Somethings binding , I think its one of your lower arm bushings...try loosing the bolt for the inner bushing(crossmember) ,just loosen a bit and see if it drops.

Either that or the trailing arm bushing wasn't put in properly

When you assembled everything was it like that before you put it on the ground?

Hows the otherside?

 

I could be wrong, but to me it looks like you've got too many dead coils.
It seems like you accidently were given a wrong set of rear springs. Ask sombody on here what the part number on their Eibachs are?

 

I´m just back from a 5 hour session in the garage. First thing I did was to take the springs/shocks out to see if I had the correct parts. All the numbers were correct for both the springs and the shocks.

Next I examined the shocks. At first I couldn´t get the dust covers off , but I didn´t think any more of it. Was a bit confused about how short the travel the shock had.
I also got the entire strut out without unbolting the lower control arm at any point which I vaguely remembered not being able to do earlier.
Then I noticed that the lower part of the metal dustcover was in fact stuck to the shock body. At first I thought the dust cover was stuck at the top because it was sort of stuck there on the stock shocks. tried hard to get it off , but had to resort to sawing it off.

So , the problem was actually caused by the metal part of the dustcover being just to small to clear the shock body. Thus binding up the whole thing and giving the suspension no travel at all. I had certainly not expected this to be the problem , though it was an easy and free repair for once

Cutting off the bottom of the dustcover isn´t really a problem since it´s still big enough to cover the whole shock piston.

 

didn't the instructions say to modify the dustcover? my KYB AGX shocks had instructions to cut a few inches off the dust cover. i left like 2 inches of the cover left....seemed to clear fine after that.

glad it wasn't anything expensive or too time consuming.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by manson &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">didn't the instructions say to modify the dustcover? my KYB AGX shocks had instructions to cut a few inches off the dust cover. i left like 2 inches of the cover left....seemed to clear fine after that.

glad it wasn't anything expensive or too time consuming.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Actually I´m not sure what the instructions say. I put the stock shocks in the AGX boxes and I don´t have those nearby. I did read the instructions before installing but I may have missed that part .
I´ll have to check the instructions when I get a chance next week.