Front suspension height

ajarofclay said
Good morning, gentlemen. Hoping you guys see this again being there I'm posting it a little further down the line. I set the torsion bars which was a little bit of a pain because I went back and forth I have dozen times and it kept changing a little bit. When I finally got it done and mounted the test Tire (not a Mickey Thompson but it is a 215/70-15) there looks to be a safe amount of clearance. That's a half inch drill bit I'm slipping between there in the pics I am attaching at the tightest position while turning. That said though the front end still looks like it's sitting awkwardly High. Right now I took the top of the jack stands off and have the lower control arm setting right on the bases and the spindles are, give or take, right about where they should be with the bottom of the tire compressed a little bit on the ground. Looking at profile shots online it looks like there's more clearance between the top of the tire and the bottom of the Fender opening than with stick E70-14 on one. There does seem to be an issue trying to bounce on the front bumper to settle things in because it doesn't really move. It actually groans a little bit when I try also so I'm wondering if the torsion bars may be bound up a little bit from all the years of sitting. Any thoughts? I hate to be bothersome but if you guys are in the vicinity of your cars, would it be too much trouble to measure from the ground to say bottom of the wheel well opening?

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Interesting! I should have paid more attention to the fact that your car is a '72, at some point in '72 the wheel openings were made longer in the front fender. Compared to a '71 the '72 fender has a shorter front section so there's almost an extra 3/4" of room in the front to the corner.

Front Fender Dimensions

As for the ride height, a couple of things. First, if you still have jack stands under the LCA your ground to fender opening measurement probably won't be the same as if it were sitting on the ground. Just because you have some bulge in the tire does not mean that the tire is fully loaded. Now, if the car has it's engine and everything else in place then the distance between the top of the tire and the body should still be the same because all the weight of the car is on the suspension, you just might not be able to use the ground as a reference.

But you can still use the A-B measurement from the FSM. That's why the factory used that measurement, because it eliminates tire height as part of the ride height measurement. Measuring to the fender includes tire height and body tolerances. These cars did sit pretty high in the front, remember these are factory cars and even new cars allow a decent sized gap above the tire to the fender. So if you're using the factory measurement, you will have a gap there.

What is your A-B number?