Adjusting the Torsion bars

Hey all

I need to raise the front slightly as i am sitting very close to the stops and having no experience with this and just reading some other threads here it kind of sounds easy but no where i have seen exactly how to do it.
Do i just measure the guard distances and wind the bolts up on the torsion bars to the required level then probably requiring a wheel alignment wheel alignment afterwards?

I may even look at replacing the shocks as they are the originals i think with 150k on them so i am thinking this should smooth out the ride a bit so do i just unbolt and bolt in some new ones?

Any suggestions, do's, don't or just leave it to an expert.

cheers

Nick

Really easy mate. Like you said measure the guards first to get your base point. Then jack up the front. Loosen off the locking nut at the top then while holding the bottom nut in place tighten (up) or loosen (down) the big bolt underneath. Drop her back down and reverse out then back in and measure. Once you have it right lock in the top nut again.

Might want to use some wd40 first to loosen them up a bit.

Cheers

It all depends how much adjustment you have left in your torsion bars, you can only wind so far as the bolt is only so long. If you run out of adjustment (ie the torsion bar adjusting bolt is fully tightened and you still need to go higher), you need loosen the bolt all the way off and remove it entirely, once its off, use a hammer with a blunt punch to hit the end of the torsion bar off (this is the torsion bar adjuster bracket, make sure you take note of where it sits once no pressure is on it from the bolt in relation to the cross member, there is also usually an annoying circlip thing which you need to remove before you can get the adjuster bracket off, it is a PITA to remove and put on, but with two screw drivers and a hammer it isn't impossible). Once the adjuster bracket is off you can reposition it so the bracket's arms which, attach to the adjuster bolt, sits outside the cross member more so than it did before, this is what is called re-splining of the torsion bar.

Remember getting the adjuster bracket placement right is crucial, if it doesnt stick out far enough from the cross member to begin with before you put the bolt in, you will run into the same problem of running out of adjustment before you reach the desired height. If you have it sticking out from he cross member too far to begin with then you may reach the height and the bolt+bracket arms will be exposed beneath the cross member and when off road they can be damaged easily, hence why you want it tucked inside the cross member safely.

Also ideally you want the adjuster brackets to sit in similar start positions and they will end up in similar end positions, this ensures each torsion bar has a relatively equal amount of torsion (circular tension) applied to it. Last time I put my car into a mechanic for work it came out with the torsion bar adjuster brackets set at different places (splined differently) this meant one side was wound up inside the cross member almost to the point of no more adjustment and the other side had hardly and torsion on it and the adjuster bracket was sticking out the cross member, this means to can be damaged easily and the torsional force applied to each side was wildly different.

Remember all this must be done with no load on the wheel (ie vehicle jacked up and supported by jack stands)

Thanks guys

Roughly how many turns of the adjuster bolt raises the guards how far, will adjusting the bolt 20mm raise the ute 20mm.

Is there an ideal distance that it should be, would this be the measurement of the distance to suit a new pair of shockers or am i thinking wrong where as the shockers will not matter.

Cheers

Nick

Just trial it with a whole single turn and remeasure then you know for sure. From what zordo was telling me he aims for 10mm off the top bump stop when installing new gear.

You cant go off the bump stop gap accurately..you really need to measure the droop from the rim to the guard..and you NEED droop

thats for the info, when i did mine some 2 years ago or so i got my factory lift back with the existing settings on the adjuster so it was just a matter of tightening the nut. but the LHS one took more turns to give me the lift and was almost on the end of the thread, while the RHD took less tightening. was that bad? i guess on my next re-adjustment i have to play with the adjuster as well? thanks.

There is a sticky at the start of the suspension section called torsion bar change that i put a few photos in, if you read this and still cant do it then take up dress making

charlie strayarc said:

There is a sticky at the start of the suspension section called torsion bar change that i put a few photos in, if you read this and still cant do it then take up dress making

Click to expand...

I would find it harder to be a dressmaker than adjust torsion bars Charlie lol.

Thanks for the help guys as this was easy, sorry i scanned through a few pages of threads for some advice and never saw what i was looking for not noticing the sticky at the top with all the info i needed.
Anyway all i did is wound up the bars about 5 turns on each bolt and this gave me approximately 10mm lift of the stops and about 20mm lift on the guards(Approx).
This has made a huge difference as it was sitting only 5mm of the bottom stops so any bumps was hitting the stops.
one of the torsion bars almost ran out of adjustment but the other has a bit to go so one needs resetting but its good for now until i book it in to get some new shocks fitted and torsions readjusted with a wheel alignment.
I didn't want to spend the money before as i didn't know if it would have made a difference to the ride but already it has so i think i will get it all done.
We have an undercar repair centre that i think use Pedders suspension, guessing they would be OK?

Nick

so you run into the same issue as me then, one torsion bar ran out of adjustment while the other had some turns left in the threads. thats what i asked for but since its not mine i am not concerned then.