Ride height help

[Jbrad]

I have a habit of installing things, thinking the car feels neutral and driving through it. I want to actually “learn” something this season and wanted to make tweaks to my 3V starting with ride height. I’m currently sitting at 14” from middle of wheel to top of fender with stock gt500 ball joints.

The front lower control arms have a slight bow to them and I believe the rears may be bottoming out combined with lack of stroke even after mauling the bump stops to next to nothing. I’m running white line brackets and trailing arms in the rear with the arms almost parallel to the ground.
I’m leaning towards starting with raising a 1/2 inch front and rear but was looking for advice before i start my decent down the rabbit hole.

 

[Grant 302]

I’m leaning towards starting with raising a 1/2 inch front and rear

One vote for: Do it.
If you’re looking for an additional adjustment, I’d try a different LCA bracket that lets you do -2”, instead of the -3” with the whiteline units.

 

[67GTA]

One of the great things about the S197 chassis is the info available from the BOSS 302S setup manual. I literally printed the setup pages from this and gave them to Will at WR Teknica for a good baseline. Honestly, I haven’t adjusted much from where he delivered the car, and it truly transformed the handling of the car. Lots of good info on ride height with detail on how/where to measure.

https://performanceparts.ford.com/Download/BOSS302SPDFs/Boss 302S owners manual version AV4.pdf

 

[stevbd]

One of the great things about the S197 chassis is the info available from the BOSS 302S setup manual. I literally printed the setup pages from this and gave them to Will at WR Teknica for a good baseline. Honestly, I haven’t adjusted much from where he delivered the car, and it truly transformed the handling of the car. Lots of good info on ride height with detail on how/where to measure.

https://performanceparts.ford.com/Download/BOSS302SPDFs/Boss 302S owners manual version AV4.pdf

That is an awesome manual but the 302S used the extended ball joints in front, correct? So a 302S will be sitting at a lower front ride height when it is set to the correct front LCA setting, which in turn will affect the rear ride height dimension provided?

I know Cortex recommends 0.5 degrees of forward rake, measured at the doorsill.

 

[Jbrad]

Going to tackle the changes this weekend. Needed to get my one stupid question out of the way for the year surrounding rear spring preload.

any tips on doing this correctly or is it as easy as jacking the axle up setting desired preload and disconnecting each shock and adjust accordingly?

 

[RodS197]

I don't think you need to disconnect the shocks, although you do want to bounce the rear, or roll the car to settle the suspension after adjustment. You would want to disconnect the sway bars, front and rear. If you have straight rate springs, it will be almost (I say almost because of angles etc.) a 1:1 adjustment. Should take you several itterations.

Most will put driver weight in the driver seat as well to set the height. Once you get it set, attach the swaybars. To get swaybars right you will need to have adjustable end links which are pretty common on the front, but not on the rear.

In the BOSS 302S docs it says that after you get the heights correct, use the rear to set the corner weights.