It'll be a quick post. Nissan is confused as to why my rear ride height is off.
On the left rear side, it's almost 1/2" lower, whilst the pass. side its higher.

I didn't want to spend vast $$ on diagnostic, I could do this myself, but its -20 outside lol.

What can this be?

Stock 04.5 springs, shocks, struts etc.


HNY!
Darryl

 

If you can tell 1/2 inch you have a very keen eye.

 

Has your Z ever been modified, suspension wise?

 

I had the same problem, although I was slammed on coilovers... the reason why one side was lower was because of the negative camber... One side had more negative camber than the other... How that happened? IDK... I just went in for an alignment, and evened out both sides and it got rid of my problem

 

is your tank empty?

 

have you hit anything or backed inti a curb and knocked it out of alignment?

 

OP, try getting an alignment

 

cars never really sit perfectly even do to fuel loading and eng torque over time.

 

I've always noticed, in the past few months, that my car sat funny looking from behind. Yes, I have a keen eye.

Nothing has been modified on this car, ever (suspension-wise). I may just have to get aftermarket springs

Thanks everyone.

 

The 350z has a saddle tank, so the amount of fuel shouldn't matter as far as side-to-side difference in height is concerned.

 

The saddle tank doesn't always sit perfectly level and throws off the heights. Thats why i do all suspension adjustments with a full tank.

 

Could be many things. But I would check for broken/worn suspension parts, shocks, springs, and most importantly bushings. Look for something that could be binding.

 

I bought my RHD model (HR) new (~15000km now) and noticed it was low on the drivers side. If you take the time to measure and confirm it's low somewhere then everytime you look at it thereafter it bugs the hell out of you. You could try swapping the rear springs over and you might get lucky and it might improve things. This is what I tried and it made no difference . Actually you could try doing a moderate (perhaps 3mm to start with) spring mount mod to just the high side at the rear but realise this will also raise the opposite front corner as well which may or may not be desirable. Take the car for a drive round the block to settle suspension before re-measuring.

After this I became aware of a thing called corner-balancing and for this to proceed the oem springs just don't cut it. After checking coilover pricing in New Zealand and a few user reviews (very subjective) I just went with BC Racing coilovers. With half a tank of gas and me in the drivers seat I got to a 5kg differential on the diagonal weights, height levelled out to my satisfaction, and said good enough.

I have the front similar/slightly lower than stock and the rear dropped about 25mm. The rear always just looked stupidly high from Nissan. I have -1.7 camber per side at the rear with the oem adjustment maxed out. At the front i've put Kinetix UCAs on and just adjust to suit on track days (not hard to count turns).

The oem ride in my 350 I would describe as reasonably firm. A serious race driver will definately still be able to do better times with the oem setup than me in my balanced coilovered example just through skill alone, but I'm liking being able to make it firmer than stock for track days (the tracks are pretty smooth and there is no-one in the passenger seat to moan about the odd bump anyway) and then dial in a more forgiving ride than oem for the public road where most of the driving is done at around 100kph or less anyway.

Just looking at the oem rear springs (which are made to a price and spec and do a pretty decent job for a sporty car) they just look so cheap and agricultural compaired to the rear springs, with adjustment, on my cheapish coilovers.

 

heavy driver? sagging springs? binding bushings?

could be any number of things...all you're going to get are guesses, you need someone to go through it with a fine tooth comb

that being said, cars don't have perfectly even heights even from the factory - 1/2 inch is more than normal, but the scenario in and of itself is not unheard of

 

Is it possible you measuring it from an uneven pavement?? worth a shot