Lowered Commodores

[VSCristian]

G'day Gents,

I apologise in advance for any offence caused.

Lowering one's vehicle:

I cannot for the life of me fathom, why, someone would spend thousands of dollars on lowering their vehicle and replacing functional wheels/tyres with over-sized rims and low-profile tyres.

I am currently on my third commodore, my previous two lived long and happy lives with standard suspensions, and died of natural causes.

I bought my current vehicle as a toy, not as a daily, and she's a VP commodore, IRS, been lowered, and has VY SS 18s on her. I've never had to use her as a daily until recently, but one of the side effects of the suspension set-up, us that it takes in a lot more stress and shock than the standard rig. She needs new bearings, CV joints, prop-shaft and other accoutrements pertaining to the suspension, caused by excessive wear and tear due to the lowering, and low-profile tyres.

Not a happy chappy.

To those of you who have lowered vehicles, my questions are these: how low, how long have you had your vehicle for, how long do you intend to keep her for, and what issues have you had due to your lowered suspension?

Cheers in advance.

 

[_R_J_K_]

A lot of these seriously just sound like the problems of any 25 year old car I'm sorry to say. I don't know what you were expecting from a VP.

Tail-shaft and diff doesn't move on the IRS setup, so don't know how you're linking that one to suspension. For CV shafts to go the car would have to be absolutely slammed though, I know plenty people who have run superlows daily for years on end and haven't had CV or bearing problems. Even I didn't have any problems in the 30,000 ks I had my VS on superlows.

I'd also wager that your shock absorbers are long gone. Most people have issues with camber wear due to the swing arm setup. The suspension setup was designed to a budget and unfortunately doesn't really lend itself well to being lowered extensively.

Unfortunately for the old bogan chariot, there's not a lot in the way of aftermarket choice. We're stuck with some pretty crappy spring manufacturers who pretty much just sell a generic spring with almost zero information about them. The majority of buyers for parts for these cars are just concerned with how low they can go, so manufacturers put comfort second and remove all meaningful information from their product so they can put height front and centre.

18s are pushing the limits of a comfortable ride on an early bird. You could gain a lot of comfort back by going smaller diameter.

By the way, how did you find out that you need all of this replaced? And how low is it?

 

[GetToDaChopa]

When i had my VR commodore wagon (a while back now) i had it lowered to about probably 10cm of the ground at the lowest point (i dont remember) but it was veery low. Having said that i had stock silver wheels with some nice soft riding tires on it so never had any problems with it being a hard ride. Ive owned the car for about a year before it was sold and never had any problems except for some scraping on the exhaust. was a fun car. found a picture.

so moral of the story is never own a commodore.... or something.

 

[Hertz Donut]

'96 VS Equipe, I lowered it and put on 18s just after I bought it in 1999. Live axle, not IRS, so less to go wrong.

Over 180,000km later and there's been nothing I've had to do to the suspension I wouldn't expect to do to a car of that age - a couple of sets of rear shocks and a pair at the front. I replaced all the front end bushes a couple of years ago because a radius rod bush was shagged but all the rest were fine, I just wanted to tighten it up. I haven't even looked at the rear end bushes yet (car has done 294,000km) but it passes our equivalent of a roadworthy test every 6 months without fail - that's how the failed radius rod bush was found. I'll do them at some point when I get the time.

It's also towed medium-to-heavy loads for many, many kilometres. I bought it as a project car because the trans was failing and I wsa going to put in a V8 when it died but as yet it still hasn't. The chassis is dead straight (confirmed by alignment shop) and it's still a pending project car. I'll drive it into the ground.

I think your biggest issue is you bought one of the early IRS models, and inevitably it'll be the weakest design.

 

[EYY]

I have lows in mine, which are around fe2, probably a little lower since I have the sedan lows in the rear. I drove a standard one not long ago and compared to mine, it felt like it handled quite poorly and had no 'feel' and lacked stability (it had new shockers too). Rear tyres wear a little more quickly, but that's to be expected on any old IRS commodore.

Replace the bushes and they'll be good for another 150,000km+ if you buy quality parts. How many km has it done? Having been lowered/modified by the previous owner, it may have had a hard life. A LOT can happen over 20 years or so...

 

[someguy360]

I have had SL springs and matching KYB shocks and polyurethane bushes in my VR Statesman for 80,000km, other than having to do one of the wheel bearing assemblies (which for a 22 year old car is completely expected) I have had no other issues even when daily driving.

It doesn't scrape, it doesn't bottom out and everything seems to wear exactly the same as any other second gen commodore with factory suspension would.

 

[vc commodore]

My daily driver VC commodore is 2" (50MM) lower than standard....It's been that way for 8 to 10 years (can't remember the exact time frame).....I drove this car 6 months ago from Adelaide to Bundaberg QLD like this....The only complaint was the seat is crap.....The solution for this is I am upgrading from old VN seats, which are shot to VS seats which are a lot more comfortable, especially when I have a bad back.

I've had to replace shockers, which is a normal maintenance thing.....I run 225/50X16's as well....Had to replace tyres, which again is normal.....They wore completely flat, as I kept the rotations upto date and alignments (every 10,000K with this, which is normal).....The only drama I struck was centralising the diff properly, with the adjustable panhard bar, to prevent the left rear hitting the guard, with weight in the back.

I also found the car didn't wollow like a boat once it was lowered.....The lowering was done after I had fitted a 30 MM front sway bar, in conjunction with a standard rear sway bar.

 

[VSCristian]

Cheers for your feedback gents,

I previously owned two VS Commodores, one with a live axle, and the other with IRS. Both had stock suspension. I do realise that my VP is twenty-five years old, but in all fairness, I took my IRS VS out to the NT, on some very rough, corrugated roads. She had never missed a beat.

My VP's lowered, but not exceedingly so. I found out about the wear and tear when I heard grinding noises coming from the rear. Am getting her fixed over the weekend, but am not a happy chappy.