lowering

[BradGTV]

just wondering what it involves to lower my gtv??

any ideas??

ive head about ajusting the torsion rods but what about the rear??

cheers, brad

[Thmpar]

I got lowered king springs for the back of mine and turned the torsion bars 4 splines i think from memory.
It took a lot of measurement and guess work.

[Storm_X]

i am still in the process of making up torshion bar removing tools my self.
so i havent lowerd the front of my giulietta yet. i will when i get the time.
but i have lowerd my back. i just took the springs out of my old giulietta im not sure if there aftermarket but i think thay have been choped. and i have koni reds allround.

how low are you looking to go ?

[BradGTV]

thanks,

either 1 inch or 1.5 inches.

[alfagtv152]

Hi Brad,
What Model GTV is it?
Cheers
Andrew

[BradGTV]

hi andrew,

its a 1985 GTV

cheers brad,

[Tristan Atkins]

Hey Brad,

If you're going to the trouble of lowering your GTV I would suggest up rating the torsion bars to 28mm and the rear springs to 180lbs. 

If you lower the front you will alter the front suspension geometry and the roll centre. My limited understanding of this is that although you lower the centre of gravity of the car (CoG), the suspension will want to mechanically roll the car which has more influence than the CoG and will make your car handle worse. If you stiffen the suspension it will help mitigate the effect of the geometry change as well as protect the exhaust from bottoming out under bumps and dips.

From personal experience I can tell you that although the car will look cool, the novelty wears off quickly after having to replace you front header. Bump steer and no steering at all when bottoming out is also not fun.

Talk to Vin from PACE. I put his torsion bars, shocks, springs and rear sway bar on the car and it's been terrific.

Tristan

[alfagtv152]

Hi Brad,
Another great Alfetta GTV!.The only option for the rear is to obtain some new springs of a suitable length(and desired stiffness) to give the ride height you are after,this can also be adjusted slightly with spacers on top of the spring between the spring seat and the body at the top.The front is a long and complicated process which means the torsion bars must be completely unloaded(which is not just jacking the car up) and the torsion bars disengaged from both the lower control arm and the yoke,then rotated a number of splines to change the height(uneaqual number of splines each end of the bar).Reassemble and check with the car on the floor.Read up on it thoroughly if you are going to attempt it yourself!.I have done it plenty of times and it always takes a lot of effort and time.
Cheers
Andrew

[jimnielsen]

If you only want to go 1 - 1.5" lower, you can just remove the rear coils (you'll need a compressor) and cut off a coil or two. the lower spring plate on the GTV makes this easy as the spring will still seat when you have cut it.  This will also have the effect of increasing the spring rate (stiffness) of the coil. There are many coil spring rate calculators on the net...

As you are not cutting much off, the springs will still expand enough to fill the 'gap' between the lower and upper spring plates, with out any risk of them falling out at full droop.

cheers, jim.

[jimnielsen]

To add to this then... having the roll center too low is a problem, especially on the track. As you lower the front suspension, you lower the roll center. In my experience, by far the best way to deal with this is to remove the uprights from the front of the car and have them lengthened - but this is probably only appropriate for a track-only car.

[alfagtv152]

Hi Brad,
As Triston and Jim have pointed out there are inherant traps with doing anything to much with the standard suspension ride height.The front roll centre is already to low but the rear roll centre is high so lowering the rear is not as much of a drama as lowering the front,I think you also need to keep even wheel arch gaps front and rear to keep an Alfetta balanced.
If you want to maximise your handling then there is quite a bit involved which also has been pointed to by others,this involves modifying the front uprights to raise the stub axle and roll centre which improves turn in and reduces undrsteer but needs to be coupled with 28mm torsion bars,no need to change the sway bar in my book.The rear would need the 180lb springs,at least a 22mm sway bar and the roll centre lowered by inverting the watts link.You can also play with wheel alignment,toe and caster front and rear.I have these modifications on my track car but my road car is max factory ride height with only a change to rear spring stiffness and thicker rear sway bar,about 1.5 degrees negative camber and few degrees extra posative castor on the front.It has noticable body roll but handles quite well,some body roll is not always bad,the amount depends on the application.
Hope we havent confused you.
Cheers
Andrew

[Al Campbell]

Brad,

As Jim pointed out, Roll centre is an issue. Lot's of people have been lowering these cars for years and lowest is not best. I'm no expert at all but there are stacks of discussions on this topic. The way I understand it is that the A-arms should be lower at the wheels than at the body, if you have the wheel ends higher then the roll centre is somewhere below the road surface and with the centre of gravity somewhere up high (1 metre off the ground?) you get heaps of roll and cause large steering geometry changes. But as to how low to go, I don't know.

One method to do it is on Greg Gordon's site:

http://www.hiperformancestore.com/AlfaSuspension.htm

Plenty of other explanations around, just keep searching.

When I brought my car (1983 GTV6) it had been dropped at the front so that the wheel ends where about 20mm above the body mounts and the flanges on the PACE headers would scrape when I went over the 70mm drop going up my drive. I used the count-the-splines method to raise the front. Lots of anti seize had been used on the torsion bars when it had been lowered and I must say the job was a doddle. It took me little while to do the first side while I worked out what was going on, but the second side only took about half an hour. I can imagine it would be a bit of a pig pulling the torsion bars if the splines are corroded. I half  stripped two high tension bolts with-drawing mine. My drive is the only thing I've scraped on by the way, but I always take it slow over speed humps &c...

My A-arms are still higher at the wheel ends, so one day I'll raise it another 20mm or so. No that I can tell any difference in the handling. Must say a standard height car does look weird.

Do be careful doing this job. There is a lot of energy in a spring under tension, plenty of scope to damage the car and cause serious injury. Greg Gordon's explanation describes how to make sure the torsion bars are unwound (relaxed) before with-drawing them.

AL.

[Storm_X]

thanks,

either 1 inch or 1.5 inches.

i wouldnt go over the top if you are only going 1 or 1.5 inch.

on the rear cut a coil off and see how that goes if you want lower only do half a coil untill happy.On my rear i have 2.5 coils cut off i think but the car is lowerd over 2inch.
on the front i wouldnt know how many splines to turn as i have nor lowerd the front yet. (does any one know how many splines to the inch ?)

also i would invest koni shockers they stiffen up the ride and make it so much better to drive.