the struts do not factor into the ride height generally, but the springs do. If the springs were not sitting in the perch correctly you could get some issues, but it looks like whoever pulled them made the blue markings on both sides, so I would think they pulled both and put both back on at some point and knew what they were doing, but you never know. are there blue marks on the strut tower itself that match the ones on the upper spring mounts. make sure they are lined up or that can be an issue as well. also over-torquing the lower control arms can cause the ride hieght to be affected if it is binding up and then was put on the ground, but to be off 3/4" or so is not uncommon in the SC world unless you redo the entire suspension. doesn't hurt to remove the wheel and have a good look around though and make sure everything was done right and torqued up properly.

 

didn't specifically mean strut, just generally the whole suspension underneath there

 

I figured they might have replaced something and just kept those hat pieces on there. Last time I was in there everything looked fine spring wise, it doesn't really make any sense so I will be in there tomorrow to take a look.

My rack seems pretty solid, I'm pretty much saying the wheel/tire combo is doing it but there are slim picking by me for anything worthy of replacing what I have.

I'm also a little worried about the alignment now with the car not sitting level

 

well with a deteriorated steering rack bushing your steering rack isnt held very well in place, when im driving the passenger front wheel would shake because the steering rack has that much slack inside the bracket its just moving all over the place, but yes it can be unbalanced wheels too, just take it step by step, and let us know

 

I'd def look at inner and outer tie rods, and also wheel balance. Maybe you lost a wheel weight.

 

drivers side


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drivers side


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Pass side


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Pass side


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Both sides seem identical, noting much to report on that. everything felt tight, my rack is fine.

I guess ill look up the torque specs for the lca so I can check them when I put in my new end links.

 

Just bumping my old thread from the grave. The cause of all of my problems was a seized rear caliper. It slowly and silently crept on to the point where the wheel would not even turn. This really screwed me over in the snow with my open diff and created a slow drain on the power which was not noticed because of how slow the problem crept forward. 6$ fix.

Some of the the signs that led to the discovery was an increase in vibration at between 45-55mph and a noticeable amount of brake dust on the one rear wheel.

I'm going to be keeping an eye on pedal feel as it was a little bit softer but its hard to tell when you have been snowed in for 3 days and haven't been driving the car. I also plan on replacing the steering rack bushing in the near future when the weather improves. Hopefully this can help someone but it was quite unusual.

 

Had to re bump this thing up. I don;t driver the car to much above 55 but I dove down into the city two days ago and it seems my shake is back and worse.

Recently lowered the car on new springs and shocks, haven't had it aligned since I don't drive much right now and it wasn't anything dramatic. Got some really bad shakes about 30 minuted into my trip, alot worse then what I had before. They went away for maybe 20 minutes and then came right back for a while. I didn;t get any dramatic shake on the trip home so this is really puzzling me.

Also my wheels are only balanced on the outside of the rime and the rest of the cars at my house have inner and outer balancing.

Any reason the shaking would get worse with a 1" drop?