adjusting ride height with torsion bars

[axl_rose]

Is it bad to tighten up the torsion bars to adjust the ride height? Will it cause any pre-mature wear of other suspension components and I am assuming a front-end alignment will be necessary after doing it. Is that correct?

 

[Captain Morgan]

Lot's of people do that. The previous owner of my rig did it.

AFAIK it doesn't cause premature wear etc, but I'm not find of the ride it produces.


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[Thermo]

axl rose, this is my view of things, doing minor adjustments to the torsion bars is not going to affect anything. But, if you do major twisting (ie, trying to get 2-3" out of the front end), you are forcing the ball joints to run closer to their max. So, now, when you max out the suspension, you are going to be either limiting the suspension based on the shocks or on the ball joints. so, if you lift a tire off of the ground quickly, you can either pull the road out the bottom of the shock or snap a ball joint (worst case).

I did a "what happens when" a long time ago using my truck and I measured the ball joint angles on my truck in a "stock form" (I had already installed my 4" lift) and then if I had done a torsion bar tweak of 3" (lifted the front of the truck up 3" using a high lift jack). I was getting something like a 5 degree change in what the ball joint sees because of that. Keep in mind that ball joints are only able to move something like +/-20 degrees. Then when you add in the fact that they already are working at some angle already, you are approaching that 20 degree angle pretty fast.

if you do some looking at FordTruckWorld under "Thermo", you should see where I did that. I did it like 4-5 years ago, but it should still be on the site.

 

[Lane24]

Did mine years ago. No ill effects. I had just put brand new ball joints in before that though.

 

[El Gato Marron]

Does this mean I can get 2'' of lift from just a torsion bar ADJUSTMENT, without needing keys? I was planning on lifting my Navigator ('02, AWD) with keys, Expy front struts, rear coil spacers and Expy coils out back, with a 3'' body lift. I'd much rather not replace the keys, of it's possible.

 

[wyo_vr4]

Does this mean I can get 2'' of lift from just a torsion bar ADJUSTMENT, without needing keys? I was planning on lifting my Navigator ('02, AWD) with keys, Expy front struts, rear coil spacers and Expy coils out back, with a 3'' body lift. I'd much rather not replace the keys, of it's possible.

I got 3-4" of extra lift (front end only) on my 99 Navigator from adjusting the torsion bar. The ride quality suffered somewhat but you get used to it. No clue on long term effects but mine's been fine for about a year.