drives side dropped 2 inches

[sn95gtvert]

long story short, drove 500+ miles monday idaho roads suck and now front drivers side is sitting at least 2 inches lower then the passenger.

its very firm hardly moves on that side when i put my 170lbs of body weight into it.

my guess is the strut

anyone else have any ideas?

 

[det_riot]

If you lift up on the driver's side fender does it just drop back down?

 

[sn95gtvert]

it doesnt move at all but then again i dont want to damage my fender so i didnt pull up to hard.

also its slowly lifting back up, wtf is goin on its all stock right now and i couldnt fit my fist between my fender and tire, now i can plus another finger...

im gonna have to dig into this thing in the morning.

 

[det_riot]

My guess would be the strut. A buddy of mine's car did that last year but his you could lift back up and it'd just fall back down. While you're taking it apart check your spring too. I just swapped out mine and found out my back two springs were bent. Who knew springs could bend?

 

[2slo95fiveoh]

Struts shouldn't affect ride height, or at lease THAT much... Even if the strut was completely blown out, your ride height would maybe only
drop 1/2".. Unless the strut is severely bent, I would look elsewhere for the problem.. Maybe your spring shifted considerably, or perhaps your
isolators rotted/fell out on that one side? I would jack that side of the vehicle in the air, and be extremely careful... If that spring did shift, you
could have a coiled up missle firing which ever way it chooses, and let me tell you from experience, a spring that suddenly has it's tension
released can cause serious damage.. (a coworker got his arm broken from one).

 

[sn95gtvert]

i pulled the strut it had no rebound, it took 5+ hours to return to fully extended. i replaced it and now its fine. smooth sailing.

vv-blown out-vv
i do like the look of it slammed like that but it rode so harsh i thought my wheel was going to be torn off.

vv-not blown out-vv

i think the valving got messed up inside and like reversed. it was way harder to try to pull back out then push in.

 

[badass98svt]

That is very odd. struts/shocks have nothing to do with ride height, well, in most cases apparently. LOL

 

[sn95gtvert]

yeah it was very odd, at first i thought it was the bushing. after taking it apart everything looked fine. ball joint/spring/swaybar end links/bushing. only thing messed up was the strut.

and it looks like i could use a set of sway bar bushings. mine are dry looking, like overly cooked chicken. they're not cracked or rotted but they do get noisie. i'll greese them and see if it helps.

oh and the iso's looked fine aswell.

 

[voidfinger]

Glad it was pretty simple. I had a strut lock up on another car like that and it was like someone was hitting me in the back with a 2x4. I'm glad it worked out and killer looking car!

 

[sn95gtvert]

^ thanks.