Rishie, I bought these coils from a forum member who had bought them from you last May.

But that's correct, though I only purchased one new damper I have switched the coilovers from side to side and was surprised to find that it sits the same. I think the coilovers are in fine condition and appear to be working they way they should, it's just that the car sits retarded.

I went through all of your steps yesterday when I moved them to opposite sides. I made sure to have the spring preloaded as little as possible, just enough to keep the spring in position, about 1/8" as you suggested. The total length of the shocks are set the exact same as of now and the passenger's side sits higher when on the ground.



Josh, I don't like to think about it but I fear you may be correct about the suspension being damaged somehow. But why else would it sit like this? It's almost as if the right trailing arm isn't being allowed to move high enough. With both set even at the lowest setting the passenger's side barely moves at all when you lower it onto the ground while the drivers does compress, this is the droop movement right? So I have basically no droop on the passengers side.

I'm going to go out and take a bunch of measurements between various parts and points in the rear suspension and see if I can come up with anything. If it comes down to it I could take it to a collision shop and have them look at it, maybe even put it on a rack to straighten it if need be.

I'm also going to be looking into getting a different subframe and associated trailing arms, etc...but does it have to be from another S4 Turbo II or even the same series or can it be from any FC??


To everyone who has helped out, thank you so much for your time. I really do appreciate it because this is such an important project for me, I have a lot of time and money into this baby and this was supposed to be one of the last steps.

 

the subframe, trailing arms, and lateral links are the same across all FC's. so you should be able to get them cheap of of like some junked S4 base or whatever.

also, try jacking up the pass side trailing arm (suspension detatched), and see how far up it goes before it binds. compare to the driver side.

 

That's good to hear about them all being the same. So what exactly should I get with the subframe?

This is my list sp far-
-Subframe
-Trailing arms
-Lateral Links
-Control Links
-Sub link
-Rear Sway and endlinks

I was actually just headed out to remove the wheels and coilovers and do exactly that, I want to see why the passenger's side whee won't go any higher??

I'll let you know the results in a half hour or so.

 

So it seems that both wheels have about the same amount of travel with the coilovers removed. I used the Mazda scissor jack to raise each hub and measured the gap to the fender from the center of the hub when it was at it highest point.

The Driver's Side-


The Passengers Side-


It appears there is enough travel to easily accommodate the shocks at their lowest settings. The jack lifted the hub very easily and I didn't feel anything binding or getting stuck in the least.

 

Okay. I think we're alright now. It turned out to be my fault after all, in the midst of everything I overlooked an important step.

Long story short the front ended up being way off side to side, plus the ground was nowhere near level. I moved to a different part of the driveway and was able to reset the fronts like I did the backs yesterday. The drivers side front was way too low and the passengers was set to high, when I evened out the fronts it allowed the back to sit the way it should. Plus the ground was like 3" off level that I was confined to the past few weeks.

The front and rear pairs are now set perfectly the same from side to side and the wheel gap seems to be perfect on each side. The traction is back in the tires and it all seems pretty good so far. I'm gonna get an alignment and I think it'll be awesome.


This is what I ended up with. Kinda blurry sorry bout that.














Thanks for helping out!!

 

looks good, glad it all worked out.

 

oh holy sh*t.. lol
yah man you really gotta set ride height on a slab of cement or whatever. somewhere you know is perfectly flat, or at least close enough. a gravel driveway certainly doesnt cut it.
glad you got it figured out tho. it would suck to go through any more crap before making the discovery.

 

Not to be an *** or anything, but I'm sitting here laughing that you missed such a basic thing and spent so much time and effort working on it. Glad to hear that it's all ok now though.

This just goes to show that if you try to take the easy way out and skip over something, it can come back and bite you and make you do 10 times as much work later on. It doesn't have to be perfectly level, it just has to be perfectly flat and reasonably level. If your surface isn't perfectly flat, you can shim some of the corners to make it flat.

 

Yeah, I was messing around with it last week, it was late at night and I was trying all sorts of things to see if I could get it figured out. I must have set the fronts way off and not remembered to put them back right. I can't believe I never thought to look at the fronts, I was so caught up in the rear. I knew the fronts had a lot of adjustment in them and was trying to get the back squared away first without making the fronts the same.

One thing that did have me slightly mislead in the beginning was that everyone was saying that it was common to have the coils overs set differently from side to side because the cars aren't perfectly balanced. So when it didn't come out right the very first time I tried making some adjustments and ended up getting all carried away and just confused the heck out of myself.

Turns out all I needed to do was even them out on a flat surface. I had to make level patches in the gravel to work with but it was good enough to get them roughly equal.

 

Oh man, I'm with the other guys on the ground laughing, at least nothing was wrong with your car and in the process you learned a great deal on trail and error's :P it's ok everyone has one of them days. Anywho glad everything's good!