Correct spring rate for QA1 coilovers
They're QA1 shocks. This is how I got the car, and all this stuff was done 2 owners previous to me. I haven't owned anything other than stock suspension cars, so this is a learning experience. Definitely didn't think that coil gap looked right though!
I never thought to lower the adjustment to possibly raise the car. Guess if it lowers the car further, I'll definitely know they're the wrong coil springs.
So first off I misspoke, if you lower the collar you'll gain back some suspension travel but that won't raise the car. It may lower it some, but not much given how little room there is to move it to begin with. It'll depend on the springs.
Looking closer at your pictures it looks like what you have there is some kind of hybrid coilover conversion kit, it's using the stock upper shock mounts with a modified LCA. There's a hoop welded in to reinforce the upper shock mount, because it was never designed to carry the weight of the car. The hybrid coilover conversions that use the stock K member like that are cheaper, but because they're using all the mounting points for the torsion bar suspension they're pretty limited in what they can do. Namely, they have to run a very short coilover, which limits suspension travel.
One of the previous owners cranked up the preload on the springs. Which would raise the car a little. Coilovers aren't ride height adjustable to the same extent as torsion bar systems though, so you can't raise the car a ton that way without significant consequences. The ones on your car are almost completely bound up, so basically there's no suspension travel at all in the front.
I would start by lowering that adjustment collar and seeing what you get. At the very least you'll get some suspension travel back, which should soften the ride up some. If the springs are actually right for the car, it shouldn't lower it a ton. If they're way too soft for the car then it may lower it too much, but if that's the case then you know what the problem is. The tires look really close to the fenders though, so it's possible that the tires were rubbing on the fenders so somebody cranked up the collars to try and raise the car some to stop that. If that's the issue then the tires will start rubbing when you lower the collars, and again you'll know what the problem is. The other thing is, if the springs aren't completely wrong for the application then the coilover is probably fully extended with the spring compressed like that. So if the springs aren't super soft then just adding stiffer springs won't raise the car any because you're already at the maximum extended length of the coilover.
Some of those conversions come with drop spindles, so, you'll need to look into that. If you've got drop spindles on there then you may need to swap them out if you want to raise the car up any.
I would lower the collars and see what happens. That's pretty easy to do, and it should give you a better idea of what's going on without completely tearing everything apart.
