spring/shock installation notes, wow. that was a lot of work. *long* Options

[soltrain]

So my brother and I worked on the celi yesterday to install new tein springs and bilstein shocks. Heh, I saw the how-to said ~2 hrs and thought, 'ok we'll start at 6 and be done round 8.' Let's just say I was a bit off.

I guess everything is about having the right tools. Also experience. This was the first major work we've done on the car, and we only had hand tools around the house.

The first time we ran into trouble was getting the big ass lower two bolts off the strut. WD40 and liquid wrench have nothin on this. After much grunting and cursing, we finally got them off after bringing out a huge breaker bar/pipe thing we stuck at the end of the wrench. To anyone else who does this, get one of those - it'll save your hands. Better yet - air tools.

Next, getting the damn strut assembly out of the wheel well was a pain. It wasn't as hard as getting the rear assembly out, but it takes a lot of manuevering.

Once you have the front assembly out and you take off the top mount, boot, bumper, and springs, you have to actually disassemble the strut by taking off the cap and pulling out the piston thing. Those babies were stuck solid - we couldn't unscrew the cap thing until we got two big plumber wrenches from our neighbor.

About here was where I paniced because the top cap wouldn't fit back on when we put the new insert in. Turns out I was an idiot and didn't notice that the struts came with new top caps that would fit. Thanks to lewfx, itchy and latino for helping out on AIM.

Either the rears were easier than the fronts or we were actually getting some experience becuase they went rather smoothly. Well almost. First, the how to suggested using an allen key to get the sway bar connector screw off. Stupid me, I tried using just the allen key to turn it out, but there wasn't nearly enough leverage to move anything. After about 15 min of trying, I gave up and used a wrench that took it off pretty quickly. Unfortunately, after changing out the springs/strut, I couldn't get it the stupid sway bar connector back on. I had the strut in, but for some reason I couldn't make it reach the hole for the screw anymore. I just left it off and did the rest.

So we started work at around 6PM - maybe 7PM, and by the time all was said and done, it was 6AM. We had to go back and forth often to my friends house to get additional tools, and at around 2AM, the police came and shut us down. That's right. the Berkeley police have nothing better to do than to stop people from working on their cars. Apparantly the neighbors thought our work light was "too bright". Had to put the rears back on and move it to my friends house all together.

At around 4AM we took 3 or 4 "keep on working" shots. Work efficiency doubled.

The springs definately make the car sit nicely, and I can definately tell the difference from OEM shocks when I brake hard; the car no longer dips deep in the front.

However, I often hear this kind of "chirp chrip" sound from the rear when I take turns ( springs? ) and still have that funny sound from the front left. I'm going to take it in to the mechanic tommorow to get the sway bar link back on and see about that noise in the front. Is the chirping from the back normal?

This post has been edited by soltrain: Mar 21, 2005 - 7:22 AM

[jgreening]

I had the same chirp from the back sway bar when it was first installed. It went away after a couple weeks.