In the endless effort to be thorough, to fix a sagging and floating suspension on my 84 chassis having roughly 180,000 miles, I elected to replace the shocks (to Bilsteins) AND the coil springs all the way round.

Good news, the car handles like new.

Bad news, the new springs lifted the car up at least four inches in the rear--and the car is 1" higher at the right rear wheel than the left rear wheel, measured from the ground, through the centerline of the wheel, to the fender bottom.

The net effect is that the car looks like some '70's kid lift kit experiment. The rear of the car is riding too high. Haynes spec calls out 7.20-7.70 inches from the floor to the rear crossmember; I've got 9+ inches.

Did we somehow get the wrong springs for the rear? Did they make different springs for a heavier (say maybe a cabriolet) than for my 84 coupe? These are supposed to be Jag OEM springs.

The real question now is, what the heck do I do? The whole look of the car is ruined. Gone is the low, hunkered down effect. Now it looks like a 4x4. You can actually see the radius arms sloping downwards under the car when looking from the sides. This is ridiculous.

Thanks for anyone with suggestions / experience.

Lou

 

Geez, if it's *that* far off I gotta think that you have the wrong springs.

What are the part numbers?


Cheers
DD

 

on most car springs can absolutely be installed wrong. Many times the spring isn't seated properly. This can be corrected by rotating the springs until they seat properly. Having said that I've never done springs on a XJS so I don't know if that's possible on yours or not so maybe someone else will chime in. But in general make sure you have all the springs in the proper places IE front vs rear etc.. Also new springs will generally soften up and drop a little after a short time. It isn't uncommon for them to sit a little higher at first and they would probably be a bit higher than your 180k miles springs once they do anyway.