71OldscutlassS

Hello everyone,

I have a 1971 Oldsmobile Cutlass S Post Coupe and i think i'm a victim of the classic GM a body lean.

my car sits in the right (passenger side) front about an inch higher than the drivers side. So, as a result of this, the driver side rear is slightly lower than the passenger side.

all suspension bushings have been replaced with polyurethane bushings by myself about 2 years ago. I replaced all ball joints too.

front and rear coil springs are brand new too (Moog heavy duty) and so are the shocks (KYB gas-a-just).

I haven't replaced the body mount bushings, because i can not notice a difference of the gap between frame and body left and right, so i dont think that this is causing the problem.

and yes, tire dimensions are the same per axle, and tire pressure is equal.

i was also thinking of that this car was an AC car, but i removed the AC, so all the 'weight' of the battery, alternator, steering box... is at the drivers side. Maybe because of that the driver side spring is sagging more than the passengers side spring??

i have read a lot about this issue in this forum, but it seems that there isn't really a solution for this.. but its driving me nuts! A lot of peoples opinion is that you have just learn to life with it, but i don't wanna life with it

Greetings from Austria!

joe_padavano

Did the lean start when you replaced the bushings or not? It is very easy to get the upper end of the front spring misaligned when reassembling the front suspension. If the spring isn't properly seated around the pilot in the frame, that corner will be about an inch high.

coppercutlass

My lean comes from the 210 lb dude sitting in the dr. side. lol. With the tall inline six springs I can make the dr. side drop about 2 inches by just pushing down. FWIW and these are brand new springs. sits nice and level until I sit in it.

Jamesbo

when mine was not aligned properly, you could hear a pop every so often

71OldscutlassS

I replaced the front springs about 2 3 months ago.

and yes i clogged them correctly in the lower control arm. But im going to check this, maybe Joe is right and the top of the spring isnt sittig correct.

thank you for your answers/ideas!

11971four4two

2 of my cars have a spacer "lift kit" between drivers side rear coil and the axle housing.
trying to even things out
Basically a 1 inch block of aluminum on the 71... The 72 has a bolt on steel number. again about 1 inch

cheers
b

71OldscutlassS

Yeah, i also heard about that many people use spring spacers, but this seems "wrong" for me, i try to understand what causes this problem.. just using spacers seems to me like fighting the symptomes, not the reason.

but if theres no other way, i think i have to fix it that way.

greetings

Kensey

Ha! This is funny, and soooo true. My Gremlin also had it.

droldsmorland

Have you tried loosing the control arm bolts on each corner with the weight of the car loading the chassis and then re-tightening? Uneven bushing torque during installation is more prevalent with poly bushings due to the stiffer durometer verses OEMs.
Measure the frame ride spec points shown in the chassis manual. Verify which corner is off.
Verify each control arm moves freely (not binding) when unsprung. You may have to start over. In other words pull the springs and verify arm articulation throughout the motion of travel.
Verify the springs unsprung height while their out(not the best way to measure but it will show gross out of spec spring). Install springs in their pockets then re-torque it all with the chassis loaded. See if things settle correctly, (remeasure the spec points).
Are the bumpers aligned correctly? Sometimes that will give the illusion of crookedness.
Next thing Id look for is frame alignment. If the frame is tweaked say one front horn got bumped up from a hard nose dive then the sheet metal was forced to fit....could be hiding a tweaked frame? A good frame guy can verify this easily on a frame jig.

71OldscutlassS

So today, i jacked the car up and disassebled the shock on the front passenger side to take a look if the spring maybe isn't sitting right in the upper pocket of the frame, but it seems to me that its correct.

in the lower control arms are little holes at the deepest point of the pocket. Now my question is if the end of the coil spring had to be at this hole to clock it correctly?

joe_padavano

Unless you have an inspection camera with a long probe, it's nearly impossible to see if the top of the spring is seated properly.

71OldscutlassS

Really? I disassembled the shocks an looked upwards through the springs and theyre sitting nicely around the pilot, not ON the pilot as i suspected..

Now i released the lower ball joint a bit, let the lower control arms a bit down with a floor jack and turned the coil springs so that the end of the coil is positioned at the small hole in the lower control arm (seems like this is the deepest point where the end should be clocked).

BTW, good idea to make sure that the bumpers are mounted level. It's true, my front bumper was sitting a bit lower on drivers side, so i think that this makes an 'illusion' of that the whole car isn't level. Will fix that after this post.

BTW2, I wanna say thank you to all of you guys who try to help my with this problem, this is a very great forum! And sorry for my poor english grammar, i don't have to talk/write so much english here in Austria