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I have a CMC wide body on a 69 IRS pan that I am restoring (the original builder did not put the love into this build originally). I recently changed the all the drums to disks, replaced the shocks, ball joints tie rods etc. when I put the car back on the ground I noticed that when looking at the car from the front, the passenger side is about 1" higher then the driver side and I cannot remember if before starting this project if it was uneven before all the changes (btw the unevenness is really bothering me). So I figured I screwed something up when putting everything back together so I took a ton of measurements checked all the shocks, and anything else I changed, and really mind screwed this one for a while and took one finale measurement with the car on the lift from the bottom of the body in the front of the car to the floor (the floor I know is level) on the passenger side, and then one on the driver side, and the passenger side is 1" higher then the driver side. So I am racking my mind on what could be the issue or how I could even fix this without removing the body from the pan. Any suggestions are very much appreciated or if anyone else has seen this phenomenon. 

Thank in advance,
Mike 

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No, it is NOT butt sag.

Please try the following steps: 

1.  Thoroughly grease the front beam.  There should be a grease fitting on each end of each of the front torsion tubes.  Get a decent grease gun and shoot 8 - 12 pumps of grease into each fitting until you see grease coming out of the end of the torsion tube next to the trailing arm hub.   Once greased, take it for a ride of 15 minutes or so and then park it on a level surface and see if it has settled properly.  If not,........try removing the front shocks, go for a short ride and see if it settles then.  If not.........

2.  Assuming that the torsion tubes and shocks are not seizing up in the front, the height of both sides in the front is really set by the height of the rear of the body and THAT is set by adjusting the rear torsion bars.  Look under “Resources/Knowledge base” up above for an article titled “setting rear ride height on a speedster” and that tells you how to do it.  No body removal required.

Yes, I did about 2x. I have the frontend apart currently to replace the gearbox so I think I will just remove the shock again and exercise  it a few more time to be on the safe side. 

BTW: Alan, I read one of yours and Gordons previous posts about the bendpak lift and got one, by far some of the best money ever spent thanks for the recommendation!

Yeah, pretty much.  

You know, since you don't yet have the drivetrain in there, I would just press on with the build and when the engine/transaxle are both in there, then you can set ride height all around and make everything even.  Setting the front left to right is done by adjusting the rear height left and right and that info can be found here:

 https://www.speedsterowners.co...rear-ride-height--vw

Trying to set ride height now without an engine and transaxle weight in the rear is fruitless -you'll just end up re-doing it when you've finished the build.

Last edited by Gordon Nichols

If you roll the car a couple/few feet  forward and back a couple of times it will help settle the suspension. As was said, without the engine and trans in the car it's hard to guess where the ride height will end up, but if you get the rear torsion bars set up now so it's even side to side it will be easier to adjust later should there be a need. A couple of friends (the bigger the better) sitting on the back jump seat will help give you an idea of where the ride height will end up.

If you can't get the ride height even after the rear torsion bars are at the same angle side to side, look at the front beam- if it's used and was pulled out of a donor car (remember it may have come out of a wreck), could one side be bent? I've seen just a bottom tube tweaked and that side would not move freely at all! If you're sure it's straight (or it's new), 1 or more ball joints could be installed incorrectly-

balljoint notch alignment

balljoint notch alignment- not correct

the notches not aligned properly will prevent the ball joint from going through it's full range of motion and make it very stiff. Not everyone these days knows about the alignment notches, so if you've had new ball joints installed it's something to check. Al 

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Last edited by ALB
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