I have just finished upgrading the suspension, Lovell's low springs and KYB gas sports shock asborbers front and rear. I have checked all the bushes and links for wear, some are replaced with nolathane at the rear, such as the trailing arms. I have had a four wheel, wheel alignment completed and on Monday I took it for the first freeway drive since this had been done.

Too say I was less than impressed would be an understatement.

The car was very tail end wobbly. I can only liken it too when I broke the panhard rod on a commodore that I once owned. The diff followed the road and the body went everywhere else.
It was very windy and probably a 45% cross wind at that, and our freeway is well rutted with heavy vehicle tyre runs, so it may have been following some of them, but at 110km/h it was a most un -nerving experience.
Has anyone ever had this happen to them, or is this a common fault in these cars? What can I do to rectify this. I have chatted to another member here in SA and we discussed a rear sway bar as a possibilty, what are peoples thoughts on this?
I am open to any other thoughts or ideas to solve this as I am heading across to Bendigo and then down to Ballarat at the end of this month and I do not like the idea of being sea sick as a driver :eek2:!

Oh, I should mention the wheels size too, 17x8 with Altenza 225/45-17 tyres front and rear Non directionals.

Cheers all.

i had a similar problem and was upper outer rear suspension bushes, the ones connecting the upper a arm to the hub assembly, but i also have a sway bar in the rear stock, so you may need to fit one if there is no wear in rear bushes.

the car shouldnt sway like that anyway, regardless of a swaybar or not

my car did this when the rear suspension was toed out a heap. really doey in the rear end. i straightened up the rear camber and got a wheel alignment and it was good as gold. also, it wouldnt hurt to check your rear tyre pressure (35 psi or 38 is good). wide rims like that with 225 rubber also wouldnt really help, i would have 235s at least on 8 inch rims. also make sure they did do a rear alignment. sometimes they dont realize magnas are 4 wheel independent suspension.

I will head back to Bob Janes in the morning and get them to re check the wheel alignment bizzo. Now that I think more on this, I had not experienced this issue before when I had the worn shockers in the car, so fitting new shockers should not cause an issue and the only other variable in the whole scheme is wheel alignment. I reckon I had driven around on the old shockers with the Lovells in for about three months now and had traveled the freeway a few times without ever having this experience. Thanks for the input guys, will let you know what comes of this.

Cheers ;)

Lowered with much wider tyres then the sensible thing for the road is to dial out the toe out and a fair bit of the negative camber.
First make sure that all the bushes are OK.

Toe out is dead easy as this is adjustable on the car.

Camber. Couple of methods. One is to buy an adjuster kit. 2 is to get the individual side camber figures. Buy longer bolts for the top arm mounts and then pack the pivot points out. A bit of math is required to work out how many washers are required each side.
Gerry

I will head back to Bob Janes in the morning and get them to re check the wheel alignment bizzo. Now that I think more on this, I had not experienced this issue before when I had the worn shockers in the car, so fitting new shockers should not cause an issue and the only other variable in the whole scheme is wheel alignment. I reckon I had driven around on the old shockers with the Lovells in for about three months now and had traveled the freeway a few times without ever having this experience. Thanks for the input guys, will let you know what comes of this.

Cheers ;)

B.J.s at Gawler by any chance? they were useless at aligning my car.

No, BJ's Mt Barker :) Took it back today and they went over it with a fine tooth comb, saying that all it needs is for one bush to have a mil or two movement and it would cause this LOL.
Anyhow they put it back on the rack and found that the rear was way out from where it was set :nuts: don't know how that might have happened huh!!:hmm: but my rear wheels looked like they belonged on the front of a V8 supercar when I got there there was that much lean on them. Me thinks a bolt may not have been tightened.
Went to Dr's appt in Adelaide today up and down freeway at road speeds, pretty much same speeds and similar conditions, windy etc and hey presto, no arse end looseness at all. They said that they brought the wheels back to a more neutral stance and to see how it goes, well it goes good, I'll just watch the wear etc now.

Cheers and thanks for the input guys :happy:

had this problem where there rear would sway, went away with a vrx rear end mal said some worn bush will do it but we changed the lot

the camber is non adjustable, so dont know what happenened there

She still looks like it has a lean on the wheels, but at least they don't turn inwards at the front ;) like a penguin walking.

Just put King lows/Boges on the rear of my TL and adjusted the camber by installing two 1/2 inch washers between each upper arm assembly bolt and body (8 per side), as you would if you bought a camber kit. It removed all the camber that came from going from stock to King low springs. Easy and cheap option if you want to keep alignment spec's as per factory. It rides and handles great. Hope to do the fronts this weekend as long as the Monroe top strut mounts from the USA arrive tomorrow.