Coil overs

[viper r/t]

Hey guys, I bought a '70 awhile back that has a coil over setup on the front. Tubular upper and lower control arms, and what looks like a stock K member. But for the life of me I can't figure out how to adjust the front ride height, since the previous owner did away with the torsion bars. The front suspension is riding on itself as is, so do I need a heavier set of springs on the front to raise it up or what? And if so what size springs would I need so that the car would sit normal and not directly on the ground or like a 4x4? Or does a coilover set up have an adjustment like the torsionbar set up somehow? The car has a 383 btw.
I need some help pretty fast as this is holding up the entire restoration!  

[HPP]

Yes, coil overs can be used to adjust the ride hieght by moving the springs seats up/down the shock body. These should be used as fine tuning adjustments and not major changes, so if the suspension is sitting on the bump stops now, and the heights were set correct, you might need new springs. The catch is were they seet up correct initially. You may need to do some searching to tech info on setting these up and repeat that process to verify. A good source of this may be the book Door Slammers book by Doug Morgan, which not only covers the ride height set up but many other aspects of suspension tuning.

[viper r/t]

Okay guys, here's some pics of what I have.




So are my springs wayyy to small or what? The guy that worked on the car before I bought it said it had 150lb springs on each side, so what size do I need?

I can't even drive the car right now as it is setting sooo low

Also the part number on the springs are c/e 3982-170
Plus I don't even know where this setup came from either......

[HOTROD]

Looks like CAP AUTO stuff !

[HPP]

Looks like CAP AUTO stuff !

Agreed. You might contact CAP first to see what recomendations they have. If those are 150#, yes, that is too light. The exact rate you want will depend on what you want to do with the car. Tough to recomend a rate right out of the blue because I don't know the motion ratio of those control arms addn what that translates to in applied wheel rate. Just taking a stab at it, I'd guess those to be applying only 75-100# of the actual spring rate, which is agreat for a drag car, not so great for a street car. You may want a spring that is in the 250-350# range.

Call CAP.

[viper r/t]

Thanks for the input guys.
Just wanted to say that a set of 300lb springs put it up to where it needs to be.

[chargerhunter]

Do you have any more info on what set-up that is? I'm doing the same swap using the factory k frame. I'm going to box my lower control arms for now, I knew about the 300 lb. springs on the front. Have you driven it yet? We are also doing alot of bracing. I would like to see how they mount to the shock tower. Does it use an adapter?