Replacing Front Springs and Shocks

[novaderrik]

jack the car up as high as you can and put it on a set of good jackstands.. take the shock out... unhook the tie rod, and loosen up the lower balljoint nut a few turns... hit the spindle with a few nice manly swings on a real hammer next to where the balljoint stud goes thru until it pops loose... place a good floor jack (a real one, not a $20 AC Delco branded Chinese junk one from Wal Mart) under the lower balljoint and take the pressure off the balljoint... remove balljoint nut and slowly lower the jack... at some point, the spring will almost fall out- a pry bar will knock it loose and it will fall straight down to the ground.

install is all those steps, only backwards. the hardest part is getting the spring to seat in the pocket in the frame and catch on the lip in the control arm, but once it does it takes less time to button that side back up than you just spent reading this post..

 

[Boxcars]

Me too.

At some point in a spring compressor's life, it will be a millisecond away from potentially altering your life.

EXACTLY!

 

[Boxcars]

NO DELETE OPTION?

 

[GNRick]

Novaderrik, a spring compressor makes quick work of installing the spring. I could not have done it without one.

 

[SpeedRacerX]

Well, my nephew and I learned quite a bit doing this job. First, let someone else do it next time

We tried the one approach, on the driver side, which was to remove the lower control arm bolts closest to the frame - that whole approach for us was a 3 hour fail. We realized later after putting it all back together that the shock was hanging up and thwarting our efforts.

We then tried the other approach, on the driver side, of letting the arm pivot at the frame after the ball joints were disconnected as Novaderrik suggested. We finally had success with this method after another 3 hours of messing with it. We just seemed to hit every obstacle possible, including messing with the rusty original shock for 90 minutes that left us no other option but to cut it off with a sawzall.

The good news is the passenger side was done in less than 1 hour since we learned all of our mistakes on the driver side.

NET RESULT: car rides awesome. Instead of crashing, bottoming and skipping sideways over bumps, the car just absorbs everything now and feels great. Ride heights are back to where they need to be. I installed the Kirban springs and the Bilstein shocks. VERY happy.

Before you shake your head, yes, I probably should have tried a spring compressor except that I didn't have enough time to buy the "good one" I would consider safe enough to use that was pointed out earlier. I will probably add the better spring compressor to my tool arsenal for next time.

 

[GNRick]

Parts stores loan the spring compressor for free. I've used the kind that hooks onto the spring and never had a problem. Always face it away from you. Installed new Moog cargo rear springs today. Height went back up to stock.

 

[charlief1]

What Rick said, except for the new rear springs.