Lower a Z06 Front LOWER Than Tightening the Bolts Will Allow

8-19-01
How to lower the front of your Z06 LOWER
than just tightening the front bolts
will allow…

First step,
make sure the car is jacked up securely, you put on the parking
break,
and you block the rear tires.

Pull of the
wheel and get ready to work. It makes the job easier if you
keep your
keys in the cars ignition to prevent the steering wheel from
locking,
that way you can turn the wheels left of right to get better
access to parts.

First step, undo the sway
bar from the lower A arm.

In order to
remove the sway bar bolt you will need a Torx wrench or an Alan
wrench
to hold the bolt while you unscrew the nut.

Here I used the Torx wrench to unscrew the bolt
while I held the nut in place
with a crescent wrench.

Pop the bolt out using your fingers, do this now,
as it is not under pressure
and is easy to do at this step.

At this point, use a jack to put pressure on the
leaf spring, this will hold
everything in place until you are ready to
lower the lower A arm.

Now you want to undo the
bolts holding on the shock absorber.

It was easy to hold the top bolt head with my hand
while I used a socket to
undo the nut from the bottom.

Now you want to undo the lower A arm ball joint,
this is a bolt and nut
system similar to the sway bar, you may need to
use a Torx wrench to hold the
bolt while you turn the nut. I found
that this was not needed to undo the
bolt but was needed to tighten it
back up again.

I used a socket to undo
the bolt.

At this point I lowered
the hydraulic jack and the lower A arm dropped with
it. You may need
to maneuver it around a bit to get it to drop, but it
should not be
hard. Here I am pointing to the lowering bolt that you need
to remove
next.

Unscrew this bolt, you
will need to turn it clockwise to loosen it and
counter clockwise to
tighten it.

After you have taken one
side apart, these are the parts you will have – 2
shock screws, 1 sway
bar nut, 1 lower A arm ball joint nut and 1 lowering bolt.

I cut off two thirds of the bushing on the bolt
using a hacksaw.

and cut it down to this.
When you reinstall this bolt make sure to
tighten it up ALL the way,
this will drop the car as far as
possible. You can always back it off
to raise the car again if you
think it is too low.

Now put it
all back together in reverse order, you will need to use the
hydraulic
jack again to lift the lower A arm into place to reconnect the
parts.

Questions? rick.williams@tenaid.com

Thanks
to my brother Ed for helping with the pictures!

Happy
Motoring!

NEW – Added some ‘after’ shots of the car to
show how low it is now sitting.

Rick out.