Not totally finished underneath the car yet, but once again a few small bits are going to need ordered in. Since I haven't seen the thing on the ground since week I brought it home, I thought I would let it down off the jackstands. From this: To this: And... a bit of a problem: I'm guessing that the spring that is in the driver side was a bit more tired than I thought. I know both sides were trimmed exactly the same, but it appears that side is about an inch lower than the passenger side. The car was hit very lightly in the front pass side before I got it, so the slightly wrinkled sheetmetal isn't helping things much. Now the question: trim the passenger side to match, or get another set of springs and start over?
I would make sure it really is sitting lower on one side. Is your driveway level? Switch the springs from side to side, and see what it looks like.
Always remember, the driver's side springs have ALWAYS got an extra 100-400 lbs of weight on them than the passenger side when gettin' down the road... the weight of the driver. If you look at most any older car 5-10-20-50 they almost always have a slight list to port, especially the ones with coil spring suspensions. Get some NEW springs and do it right.
The bumper is jacked, but its definately leaning. I straightened it out in iphoto on my computer, and its sitting way off. I would probably get new springs and start from there as to not have more suspension travel in one side than the other. (Assuming the passenger side would end up with more cut than the drivers) Its a very common problem for lowering old cars. Global warming wasnt an issue so nobody car pooled!
I looked things over again. I'm pretty sure that the bumper is the straightest thing going on at the moment. The driveway is fairly level... or at least flat... I'm sure it slopes a bit. Measuring from the corners of the bumper, the driver's side is at 8.25", the passenger side an even 9". Like I said, the grille and the driver's fender have been smacked, so they are pushed down and back some which is a bit tough to see in the pics due to the craptacular suede black job the previous owner did. Adding further, I noticed that the body mount on the passenger side at the base of the firewall was repaired at one point. It looks to sit a touch higher on that side than the driver's side does. Am I just looking past body mounts at the radiator support area? Looked around there, but I didn't see anything... odd. I was thinking that the shims might be jacked a bit there as well. I'm thinking that I'm looking at a combination of things here, I'm just not 100% sure where to start tweaking at. I'm thinking that I need to get some measurements from each side of the crossmember and see how that looks. I should probably also add that I'm not real excited about putting a new set of springs on it. I would like to bag the thing over the winter, I just want to get things sorted out mechanically and drive the car for a few months before I disable it further.
The Jalopy Journal
