So I ordered the Ground Control adjustable springs like 2 months ago and never had the chnace to bring it to a autobody shop to get them installed. I had some free time and decided to call a random shop and the guy who picked up the phone told me to swing by to check it out so he can gimme a price. When I got there, he told me that the tC's rear was coilovers and that the fronts were something called Macpherson struts and the springs that I ordered from Ground Control were smaller than the stock ones. I didnt know what he was talking about cuz im pretty much car illiterate. Can someone explain?

 

ok. The rear of the tc is a "uneven length double wishbone" type with a seperate spring and shock. That means that the spring does not sit around the shock like, for example, a honda's. The front is a Macphearson...This means that the shock is an actualy a structural part of the suspension. There is a lower controll arm that the shock mounts to and then the shock mounts to the body...if you were to remove the shock the wheel would be allowed to flop around and the car would collapse on the tire. The spring sits around the shock. The shock is instrumental in holding the car off the ground. If you were to remove your rear shock/spring the wheel would still travel up and down in it's normal path.

What all this boils down to is that the guy you talked to sees seperate spring and shock and doesn't think adjustable suspension.

 

aka go see another shop.

 

interesting

 

would anyone near sf mind helping a fellow scion tc owner put on the ground controls??

 

Question.....

Have you ever seen the rear suspension on your car??

It is a strut setup just like the front. Meaning the spring is wrapped around the shock tower and actually together they are installed in one piece. FYI

 

^Yeah, exactly. And coil-over retrofit kits (like the Ground Controls) almost always use a smaller diameter spring than stock. They use the same size assmblies for virtually every car, then tailor the spring rates for the particular vehicle. That size spring is a standard size for racing applications.

 

thanks for explaining it to me.