I've come to the conclusion that the rear spring perches on these cars most likely weren't in line with each other top to bottom. I installed my adjustable spring perches with 175# 8" barrel springs and they sit on the lower perches angled back at all suspension travel, even sitting the car up at about stock height. I can't correct this by angling the rear diff snout down (with an adjustable torque arm for instance) because then the driveshaft would be at the wrong angle. The simplest way I can think of to fix this would be to angle the bottom of the adjusters with a grinder. I suppose Ideally you would want adjusters that had ball pivots built into them to keep the spring at the best angle all the time.

Anyone else notice this and have a solution to this problem? These cars sure seem to have their share of design flaws.

 

Wait until you see the front.

 

The UMI weight jacks i installed have a slight angle built into the bottom plate to "accommodate" that angle. So yeah they're pretty off!

 

Yes, the 3rd gen front suspension is a cruel joke. It's as if GM designers and engineers couldn't decide if they wanted a coil spring or strut suspension so they combined the two. Now instead of being able to buy standard front shocks we have to buy specialized shocks that only fit our cars.

 

I wonder if any brave soul has ever tried to convert on of these cars to a truck arm rear set-up. That would be one way to get rid of the weak torque arm and short trailing arms, and to correct the rear spring misalignment (and probably other problems).