OK, I think I understand what the factory method describes. The height of the torsion bar center should be 3.5" less that the height of the front axle. With the example numbers, that should be almost 9 inches.

Is it me, or does that produce a ride height that is kinda agricultural?

I have been setting the initial height on my rebuild. My axle height is about 11.8", so the target torsion bar center height should be 8.3". But my personal preference got that down to 6.8"--that's 1.5 inches lower. And I would not call my preference "low" (the front rocker seams are 6.3" above the floor).

Any comments?

running 165 VR 15 XAS = original profile tyres.

A = 305mm
B = 220mm

A - B = 85mm (acceptable tolerance of 90 +/- 5mm.

have the car set up dead level front to back.

my rocker seams are 190mm off the deck = 7.5" in imperial.
don't use feet and inches down here.

seems to be a bit higher off the deck than yours - probably the tall boys!?

got no complaints. handles sweet but then again its just a standard stock 1.8 with sway bars front and rear and skinny tyres. but dives into corners nice for what it is.

we just set it up with the new bilstein shocks on rear with original springs.
went from there. set up front level. then checked against factory settings in manual as you have posted above and found we were at lower end of tolerance. figured that was fine as it used to sit up at front. left it at that. i drove it. loved it. left it alone except for an alignment after that.


EDIT

here is the other half of how we did it - we worked off the back suspension first.
there is nothing in the factory manual that tells you how to set up the rear shock and spring! or at least i could not find it.

just says there are three stock springs and to sit the spring on the perch and to rotate the perch a certain way so drain hole pointed in.
so..... what we assumed is back then all the shocks had the fixed perch?
mine still had the original boges with the fixed perch position.
we measured it and went to nearest ring on the bilstien to give us that.
the boge measured at just on 180mm.
the nearest ring to that was 185mm on the bilstien.
so we went for that figuring if we did not like it we could go the next one down which would be noticeably less than 180mm.
those rings looked like they were about 15mm or so apart from memory.

so we got the back of the car set up that way.

then levelled it out so front = back. and side to side level using the front torsion bar adjustments.

at end as per above we checked against manual settings and found ourselves just on the outside of the factory measurement/tolerances.

i could have the car set up one notch down lower on the bilsteins and i guess i would have the car down at something closer to the settings you cite above.
but i reckon i got close to a stock set up with mine.

thinking back on doing it, not sure how i would have managed if i did not have the original boges to give me that reference to start with as there just wasn't anything in the factory manual.


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