Rasing the rear of my Commodore VC

Can anyone gove me some tips on raising the back of my commodore VC. Thanks

Why?

There are differnt ways of doing it depending on why you need to.

If the springs are just sad and have settled too low - then a replacement set of springs may be the way to go. Try Pedders, Repco or any aftermarket springs/shock reseller (try Holden as well for a quote too).

While you're there, if you are towing or carrying heavy loads - then you may consider changing your shock absorbers. Holden used to market 'supalift' shockers which you could adjust with air pressure for desired ride height - more air when you had a heavy load to raise the tail up - but making sure you deflate after removing the load.

The alternative for towing is a load-distributing device which spreads the weight from back to front - try Holden or a reputable tow bar installer for more information.

There's recently been an interesting series of articles about early Commodore supension in the Daily Telegraph auto section by Joe Kenwright, one of my fave writers. In it, he highlights the traps of replacing factory rear bushes with neoprene & polyeurathane aftermarket ones: Factory high-quality rubber/nylon bushes are of a special 'voided' construction and made in a dedicated high-pressure process, which temper Commodore's well-known tendancy for dire snap-oversteer (Holden apparently spend millions of $ developing these) whereas cheap 'n nasty aftermarket bushes are via low-pressure manufacture merely slapped through a mould and can transform vehicles into a tail-happy nightmare. It's easy to detect these cars when you're following them in traffic - jiggling over every minor bump, unbalancing the handling dynamic and I certainly wouldn't use them in my car.

If you're raising it for rough-road clearance issues, Holden had a 'Country Ride' option (my brother has one of these) which works well and conversion parts may still be available through a dealer. In my experience, dealer-sourced factory parts can be cheaper than shoddy aftermarket junk. I think the mounts were strengthened as well. If however, you've installed overly wide wheels and have a tyre-clearance problem, then address that instead of jacking the back up "like a stink bug in heat" rather than through Air Shocks etc. BTW did you know that by using air shocks alone (with standard height springs) to artificially raise ride height may lead to cracked shock mounts, split floorpan etc, as shocks should not be used to support the weight of the car .. that's the job of springs. Use a matched system