Rear suspension

[Loren]

Originally Posted by enobmort42

Hmm. I'm lowering my car now, and I may be wrong, but from what I've gathered after reading this thread, I either need an alignment or I should adjust the pivot point?

Both.

After lowering, you need to align the FRONT of the car, it's the end that has factory adjustments.

In the rear, the only thing that changes with lowering is the toe-in, and there's no way to adjust it without shimming. This new "modification" should minimize or possibly eliminate the toe change, but be aware that it's a very new idea and the potential downsides (contact between axle and fuel tank?) are just being discovered.

[Loren]

Whoever does this next, if you have time, do this:

You should be removing the springs to accomplish this task, anyway. So, before you reinstall the springs, after you put the bolts into the higher pivot point position, raise the rear wheels/hubs to max height and see exactly where and just how bad the contact is. Take pictures of where it is making contact, and of how close the upper and lower spring perches are to each other. (how much would the spring be compressed if it were there?)

The problem could potentially be dealt with by lengthening the bump stop. Of course, that's going to mean that very low cars will be resting on the bump stops and essentially have no suspension travel... which defeats the purpose of damn near any suspension mod. (assuming the goal of a suspension mod is to make the car handle better in real world conditions)

Could potentially also be dealt with by just trimming some material on the axle assembly somewhere, or maybe relocating or modifying something that is bolted TO the axle. Need to take a close look and see exactly what's going on.

[ddongbap]

I kinda get the feeling that people with regular drop springs aren't supposed to do this.

[enobmort42]

Originally Posted by ddongbap

I kinda get the feeling that people with regular drop springs aren't supposed to do this.

I hope that's the case! I just have some TRD springs on my stock shocks, until I have enough for the TRD ones... The instructions don't say anything about the pivot point...

[fmicle]

I've been running with this mod for almost 2 weeks now and haven't had any issues so far. I've only had the baby in the back, no other loads or longer trips and the roads are decent where I drive, so no big bumps or anything. I haven't heard any bumping, other than just the springs a couple of times after I installed them, probably from just setting in...

I am running on Progress springs though, with a medium drop of 1.4". I'll keep an eye on it though, but I've seen the alignment numbers on the rear axle with this mod and they look perfect, I would probably do my best to keep it that way.

Oh and the handling (with the new Toyo T1R's that I got) is amazing

[ddongbap]

I think the T1Rs are doing the grunt work of the handling.

On a side note, I installed the 23mm rear sway bar. IDK what I'm supposed to be feeling though.

[detroiter]

I just got an alignment check and everything came back well within factory specs while using the higher bolt point. ill throw the numbers up soon...

[kngrsll]

Originally Posted by ddongbap

I kinda get the feeling that people with regular drop springs aren't supposed to do this.

why do you feel that? to me, that seems like the ideal candidate.

[ddongbap]

Cause Toyota sells TRD shocks and springs w/o saying anything about the second set of holes.

[fmicle]

Originally Posted by ddongbap

IDK what I'm supposed to be feeling though.

Less body roll (swinging from side to side) when cornering, changing lanes, etc. The car should feel more "planted" on the road and you should be able to take turns at higher speeds than before.

Disclaimer: please drive responsibly!

[fmicle]

Originally Posted by ddongbap

Cause Toyota sells TRD shocks and springs w/o saying anything about the second set of holes.

Toyota also says you can put 14" and 15" wheels on your car and no mention of bigger sizes and as far as I know there was a photo posted here with someone having 19" wheels on the Yaris. Plenty of people have 17"s and I had 16"s until 2 weeks ago

[YarisSedan]

Hmm i put my car on rack tonight and took a bunch of pictures. Ill post everything tonight if i have time when i get home. The rear springs look partially compressed. Half the coils are compressed and touching. You couldnt even fit ap iece of paper between half of them. I think this could be why the rear end feels lower and appears to be lower. It actually is. Also why the rear feels stiffer because this should increase the spring rate since its under a big preload now. . The rear beam is only maybe 2-3 inches away from the gas tank. I think the clunk is either the beam making contact with the filler neck or the top of the tank or the springs just bottoming out and hitting the bump stop. I think it could be a combination of any of them.

So i think if you did this mod on factory springs you would have some gain. Would even out the rear end so it dosnt sit abnormally high and get all the benifit still without the issue some of us who lowered the car have. Ill post the pics tonight so you guys can see what i mean. Hopefully loren can take a look at them and give us his thoughts.

[YarisSedan]

[YarisSedan]

So first picture the area i circled is the area i am concerned about. But now that i think about it when i removed the bar i had to struggled so its a possibility it may have caused some of the scratching on the gas tank. My plan is to put some chalk on that area tomorrow and then drive it over some bumps and see if it rubs it off.

Second picture you can see the small distance between the beam and the gas tank. When i had my tie bar installed there it was literally less than inch from beam which is why it kept clanking against it.

The second picture with the circle mark shows how close the beam is to the filler neck of the gas tank. I suppose if you had a bunch of heavy set people in the back seat and went over a really hard pothole there is a chance it could make contact. Also the fewer last pictures you can see how tightly wound the coil spring is. I am not sure if this is suppose to be normal. But the top portion of the springs are all touching. I am thinking the clunk is the spring completely compressing and making contact with the bottom but not 100 percent sure.

Still hoping loren will take a look at this pics and give us some insight.

[Loren]

Remove the springs. Then you can easily move the axle through its complete range of motion to check for interference with the fuel tank or anything else.

The pix are good, they tell us the area of concern... but they don't show any actual contact.

[cali yaris]

If there were contact, you'd see it - the paint would be worn/chipped/rubbed.

[ddongbap]

Originally Posted by fmicle

Less body roll (swinging from side to side) when cornering, changing lanes, etc. The car should feel more "planted" on the road and you should be able to take turns at higher speeds than before.

Disclaimer: please drive responsibly!

I'm already on coilovers, so most of the bodyroll reductions went down after the coils.

[fmicle]

I think it's normal for the coils to look the way they do, same thing with mine, even though different brand, the first 3 or so spirals touch each other...