To lower or not to lower???

It does depend on the clocking of the torsion bar. The problem with really large torsion bars is that the static weight of the car doesn't compress the suspension very much, so the ride height of the car is more sensitive to the actual clocking of the bars.

You can actually change how the LCA's are clocked on the torsion bars too. Typically you install the LCA's on the bars with them hanging down as far as they will go. But you can also install them one hex flat up from that, which results in the LCA's being pretty close to ride height. With the clocking on my 1.12" bars I found that there was only one way to install them, and to get as low as I wanted I needed to raise the upper bumpstops because the adjusters would unload at full extension. Not enough for the adjuster bolt to fall out of the LCA tab, but enough that I wasn't comfortable with it. If you look at the bumpstops that Hotchkis provides with their UCA's you can see they're taller than stock. I run the same ones on my car.

My next modification is installing tubular LCA's from QA1. That will do two things, one is that because the profile of the tubular LCA is shorter, I will gain back some suspension travel, about 1". The other is that because the LCA's are narrower as well I should be able to clock them differently than the stock arms. Although that may or may not work for my ride height, we well see.



Good point! The actual wheel travel is different than the travel at the LCA where the bumpstop hits the frame because of the length of the LCA between the bumpstop and the ball joint.

Even with only about 1" from my bumpstops to the frame (maybe a smidge less) I rarely ever hit the bumpstops with the 1.12" bars. Occasionally with large pot holes etc it does happen. That should also be eliminated with the extra space I get with the tubular LCA's.


The bars in my car now are clocked 15 degrees if I remember and I think they are 1.14", they went in almost exactly where the ride height is, I would say that you could run them with no adjuster bolts, that reminds me I should shorten those bolts this winter as they hang low.
I will have to check out the QA1 lower control arms, I assume they bolt to the stock k member as well as the tubular ones they sell.