Brangeta

Some of you might recall me saying a long time ago that I was impressed that the Lamboghini Murcielago had a system that would raise the nose of the car two inches to improve ground clearance for going over train tracks, speed bumps, and up driveways. Blah blah blah... I was interested in knowing how it worked and if a similar system could be made for Camaros so the airdam on lowered cars wouldn't scrape on speedbumps and driveways. Some people agreed with me, and thought it would be cool too.

Fast-forward to today...

I finally got around to researching it and found out how it works. The powersteering oil is pumped into the special Koni shocks at high pressure and it pushes the piston in the shocks upward, thus raising the car. Cool. Right?

No.

Not cool.

The system sucks. The shocks leak and they are expensive to replace (even by Lamborghini owners' standards) and coming up with a similar system on a Camaro would be a giant waste of time and more than the ~$500 I was willing to spend on what I thought was a cool idea.

You can read about how it works on the Lamborghinis here:
http://www.lamboweb.com/Repairs_Sect...ing_System.htm

And if you have no idea what in the heck I'm talking about, you can see the system in action at one point during this video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=0phtS2r0sU0

How disappointing. Is there some way to use airbags to do the same thing on a Camaro without using them as the springs/shocks? I don't want a squishy airbag ride... or a trunk full of batteries and hydraulics.

Wraith

No, not in front. I thought the new airride setup was not a traditional "squishy" airbag shock/feel. The biggest part of the new system is the tank and that could probably be hidden in the spare tire well. Depends if you want this compromise. It's that or coilovers so you can leave the front at maybe a 1" drop at most for daily driving where clearance might be an issue.

Brangeta

I'm not very familiar with suspension setups. Coil-overs are what? Springs? Shocks? A combination of the two?

The 1LE adjustable suspension comes to mind, but I believe you have to remove the wheels to adjust the ride height with that setup. Am I right?

Pretty sad that I've been here so long and still know so little about certain things...

Wraith

They're a combination of the two. This is not an FBody one, but serves the purposes of what they look like in general. The 1LE package featured adjustable Koni shocks, but did not affect ride height, only rebound/dampening.

Brangeta

Do you have to remove the wheels to adjust the ride height with coil-overs such as this?

Wraith

I am not sure for the FBody's. I believe they have a spanner wrech to adjust the perch that allows for the overall height adjustment.

Brangeta

Hmm, well, if changing the ride height doesn't require jacking the car up and removing the wheels, I might consider it. Otherwise, it just seems like such a hassle just to have a car that is sometimes low to the ground.

I really don't want any more of a nose dragger than I already have... I saw an LS1 TA pull out of a small parking lot in an old area of Dallas yesterday and the license plate area of the front bumper rubbed the street on their exit from the small lot. That owner can't be happy. I literally saw the lower part of the bumper warp as the car came out onto the street... the scraping sound was horrific.