Help. I turned my cruiser into a low rider

[Yodaman]

All, I just finished replacing ball joints, tie rod ends, shocks and control arm bushings on the upper and lower. The shocks were purchased from Toyotapartsdeal and appear to be the correct part number. All other parts were purchased from Partsouq. I re-used the original control arms and pressed in the new bushings. When I set the cruiser down afterwards the front end was so low that the tires were only an inch from touching the fender. What did I mess up? I did not do anything with the coil spring.

The one thing I did do differently from some of the write ups was install the frame mounted bushing with the tabs at 12 and 6 because I read that there was a TSB saying that is the best way to install them now. Any help is appreciated. Thanks

 

[MongooseGA]

Did you remove the control arms in this process?

If so you would have had to remove the torsion bars from them to get the LCA off the truck. You need to Tighten on the adjustment bolt at the back of the torsion bar to bring the front end back up.

There's a ton of info on here and YouTube for installation and adjustment of the bars.

 

[Yodaman]

Yes, i did remove the control arms and loosened the torsion bars. I also torqued the torsion bars as right as they will go and it does not seem to have any impact on the height of the front end.

 

[MongooseGA]

You're referring to the 30mm adjustment nut at the back of the torsion bar? All else correct, you'd see the front end on the moon if you tightened it all the way in.

Did you ever take the bars out of the cups on the backside? Or did they stay on? There are alignment marks on both ends that will correspond with notches in the bar end mounts. If those aren't aligned on either side, you won't get the tension you need in the spring.

And make sure you lift the front tires off the ground any time you're adjusting that bolt.

 

[excessive]

your torsion bars are incorrectly indexed. you'll need to remove them, and index correctly. did you happen to make marks on the T-bars and T-bar brackets before you disassembled ?

 

[GerLC100]

I had some stuff in one of the grooves on the torsion bar and you could only place them in one specific spot. I could imagine you try to adjust them under full load as Mongoose already suggested.

Perhaps you can post a pic of how the adjustment bolt looks like and how far it's hidden in the mount. This way everyone can judge better if you have "miss-indexed" them or you still have way to go to bring the front up.

In addition:
Seeing this problem, have you torqued the control arms at the correct ride height? using a jack or whatever you need to bring the hub/ fender distance in place and at this height torque the control arms down! Otherwise the bushings will always be under heavy load and break very soon!

 

[GerLC100]

Cruiser Patch explains it in his video, minute 9:00.


Front hub to fender should be 19.5"