The Detroit Speed and Engineering front coilover suspension conversion was much stiffer and more predicable than the suspension on my 4th generation Camaro, but I decided to stiffen the shock setting up a bit to minimize the body roll I had seen in the photographs of the 1968 Camaro during the autocrossing events. I also wanted to lower it just a bit, in order for the car to have a little better stance (it had the appearance of being lower in the rear than in the front) and to lower the center of gravity of the car for improved handling. Unfortunately, unlike some of the other coilover conversions available in the aftermarket, the Detroit Speed and Engineering design requires you to break your lower ball joint and swing the lower control arm out of the way in order to remove the coilover to adjust ride height or the shock setting. While this can be done in a few hours with the correct tools (maybe even faster if you do it all the time), it’s a hell of a lot more work than just turning a dial or set screw to adjust your shocks and turning a spanner to adjust your ride height.
But I’m starting to get the hang of adjusting the coilovers, having done it a few times now from setting the car up to going through the RECON inspection to fixing a problem with the Delrin spacers used on the coilovers between the spring and the aluminum spring hub. After a few height adjustments, my spacers from Detroit Speed and Engineering were toast, all cracked up. Unfortunately a few calls to DSE netted only confusion, so I decided to machine my own, on the CNC milling machine. I made them out of Delrin, but a little thicker than the ones DSE sends with their coilovers, so they would be less prone to cracking up. Later I called back and got Stacy Tucker on the phone—she sent me new Delrin spacers from DSE for free, which I accepted not yet knowing how well mine would work. I also made my own spanner wrench out of an old aluminum bicycle crank on the milling machine, because I went to 4 different places here on Oahu and no-one would sell me one, and I didn’t want to pay $50 to ship a $15 tool to my residence here in Hawaii. It took one long morning to adjust the coilovers to one click off the stiffest setting (to match the rear shocks) and drop the front end ride height by four tenths of an inch. My homemade spanner worked pretty well. My coilover spacers worked great, so I saved the one from DSE. A few test rides around town confirmed this setting just barely scrapes the headers on the highest speed bumps, so it’s either right on or just a wee bit too low. It fixed the stance too, so now the car appears to have a neutral to slightly leaning forward stance. Someday I’ll get some headers like Doug’s tri-y’s with more ground clearance, but for now I was satisfied with the adjustment.
