Rear suspension position when torquing fixings

As per the title, does anyone know how far the rear suspension should be compressed when tightening the nuts and bolts which secure the wishbones etc? For the front suspension the manual says to line up the pointers on the lower arm, so that's easy, but for the rear, the guide just says to tighten with the suspension loaded or the car sitting on it's wheels, so not very specific for those of us working with jack stands. I guess there will be a position where one of the arms is horizontal or at a speciific angle when the load is correct. Failing that, I assume the lower transverse arm (coffin arm) will be at the same angle to the horizontal at the back and front when loaded correctly, so I could just load the fron util the pointers line up, then measure the resultant angle of the arm?

You just tighten them up when the car's on the floor. Surely it doesn't matter though if you're going to get the geo done shortly after?

Reaching the nuts/bolts with the car on the floor and wheels in place is "challenging", as I don't have a lift or pit. I'd like to avoid unduly straining my nice new rubber bushes, as not all of them would be loosened again even when the alignment is done (eg upper wishbones). I'm probably over-thinking this somewhat, as I can compress the suspension until it looks about right, which will probably be good enough, but it would be nice to have a definitive reference to work to.

I'd plonk the wheels on, drop on the floor, measure from centre of wheel to arch, then back on stands, wheel off and compress the hub to replicate.

Done mine last week. I have a four post ramp so loaded the suspension with the jack from the frunk. I measured the approximate distance from wheel arch lip to hub centre at 360mm and jacked to that. I agree it's far easier to do like this for some nuts. Just be careful not to pull it off it's axle stands with the bigger torque settings.

I've just done lower arms on my van and it said to measure wheel arch to hub centre while on the floor then once changed use a jack to lift the lower arm up to the measured distance, then torque up the bolts. Other option is to drop it onto some bits of wood - railway sleepers are ideal.

If the car's on an angle (front to back) will that not alter the seated position?

Alex, Maybe but enough to get it for its geo check! Could always put it on 4 blocks. Ian

This is the correct and simplest answer - I just wish I'd thought of it before taking the whole lot to bits! Nothing stopping me doing it again once I've got the arms etc in place and not fully tightened, but jacking the car up and down becomes a chore really quickly. If I find that putting the car up in the air becomes much more regular, I can see myself investing in one of those mid-rise lifts.... Thanks for the advice guys.

What suspension are you running? If you search on the web there are plenty of discussions about ride height on a 996 often with people taking measurements from their tyre to the arch. Dig out one of these threads and with a little bit of maths you should be able to get a pretty accurate number for ride height with your setup. Then it's just a question of measuring the drop.

I'm in the middle of doing mine and my heights (hub centre to arch) on an M030 set up are 355mm front and 345mm rear.

I raise the car on blocks and torque the corresponding axle that way, no need to block all 4 wheels if you are just doing one axle.