Hello everyone, long time reader, first time poster. I have a question about cobalt suspension. I just lowered my car about 2 weeks ago with the pro-kit and at the same time changed my factory wheels over to my 17" Reaction wheels off another car of mine. I made sure the trim the bumpstops in the front when I did the springs but figured the back looked fine and shouldn't need trimming. Also did an alignment and used cam-bolts to bring camber back in. Well I love the way it handles and everything but I live in the country so I don't usually deal with potholes and tore up roads....until the other night. I went into downtown Cincinnati and was cruising along at about 20 and all the sudden felt like I slammed into a brick wall. I looked back and saw there was a section of road that had the surface tore off of it for about 10 ft. or so, so there was about a 3 inch drop down and immediately back up. After that my steering wheel was crooked to the right pretty badly. I checked the tire pressure to make sure I didn't blow any out so that was all good. Anyhow, I am a mechanic at a local tire shop and still need to get my car up and check to see what, if anything, is bent under there. Has anyone else had this happen to them? Seems to me the suspension could be a little more heavy duty if it's bending parts from a pothole at 20 mph.

 

It could have thrown your alignment off possibly if you hit something that bad, iono sounds fishy especially at that slow of speed. Not sure. Maybe you should come up to the Columbus Ohio meet on the 22nd of April ha and someone can help you out there for sure, plus the more cobalts the merrier! ha. Hope you get it worked out man.

 

It does sound like an alignment issue. Or it could be a tie rod. These cars are low. I know all about pot holes my friend. I was at a Burger King doing 4 or 5 mph and I dropped into a pothole and broke the plastic pin that holds up the plastic wind deflector underneath the front of the car. Garbage

 

That is exactly why I probably won't lower my car...That sucks man. I would say your alignment is off. Go to the dealership and see if they can do it under warranty.

 

Long time reader.....first time poster, hmm.........you must be a Bob-N-Tom fan

 

A bigger set of tires will give you the look of a drop if that's what your going for. I personally won't do a drop with my car because of this. There is a reason they leave it at that height from the factory, they have it all figured out already for clearance. It's all up to you but personally I think you broke something but it's not completly broke... at least not yet..

 

Well, I thought I'd give everyone an update as to what happened. While at work today (I work at Tire Discounters, so everyone in this area of Ohio should know us by our idiotic radio commercials) I pulled in my car and visually inspected the underside of the car thoroughly and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. So I set up the alignment heads on it and checked it out. Well, the right side camber was sitting at -2.4 degrees. I believe the specs are -1.75 degrees to -1.0 degrees.(Yeah, cobalts run a lot of negative camber) So as you can tell, something kicked that wheel WAY in. When I did the alignment after lowering it, I put in cam bolts to be able to adjust camber and apparently I didn't tighten the one on the right side enough because the head of the bolt was shifted just slightly. I simply loosened up the nut all the way and the camber fell back in dead center. Guess I got lucky this time. Need to remember to tighten those bolts down a little tighter from now on!

 

Where at in Columbus and what time?

 

April 22nd, at around 3 or whenever you can get there up at Sharon Woods park, there is a thread on here that is titled "Cbus meet" or something like that all the info is in there and if you want to come and need more help with directions feel free to PM me, I could meet up with you that afternoon and we could cruize up there or something, its up in the Westerville area, Lemme know man, the more balts the better!