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Replacing Shocks And Springs


our06t

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  • Member
  • Member For: 18y 11m 24d
  • Gender: Male
  • Location: New Zealand

I did the same thing last week.

On the passengers side I did what you suggested, removing the top strut bolts, and the one under the ecu is a pain in the ass.

So... on the drivers side I took a different approach.

My step by step would be:

1. with car on the ground - remove radiator overflow bracket bolts and sit on top of turbo shield

2. remove air filter housing and pipe to crossover

3. unbolt centre bolt that holds the top of the shock on each side (that is why the car needs to be on the ground or it turns)

4. loosen wheel nuts

5. Jack car up and support

6. Remove wheels

7. remove bolts holding sway bar to brackets

8. Loosen sway bar brackets and swing sway bar out of the way

9. remove bolt holding the strut/shock to the bottom arm

10. remove bolt holding top arm

11. pull down hard on bottom arm (I didnt have a problem with wire or brake hose)

12. remove shock and spring (didnt need to take strut top or use compressor in the end)

13. remove spring from strut, and put new one on

14. put all bits back on, do up bolts

15. Put car on ground, do up shock bolts, wheel nuts

The passengers side doing as you suggested took me about 1.5 hours of pissing about, drivers side half an hour all up.

PS - my car now has standard shocks, SL King front, SSL king rear, whiteline swaybars front and rear, and I am very happy with the stance and handling. I recently added GT 19s with GoodYear F1s - and the car handles really well for a big car. The car used to break traction in the dry as boost comes on, now it has about the same grip in the wet (almost).

Edited by cobrav8
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  • Mmmmm......BOOST
  • Member
  • Member For: 16y 10m 20d
  • Gender: Male
  • Location: central coast

I'm glad that worked ok for you , and probably will in most cases , BUT undoing that center bolt can cause you injury if the spring is still under pressure when you undo the bolts at the bottom of the shock .

mine was the same too always takes 3 times longer to do the first side , once you know what ya doing it's all too easy

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  • Member
  • Member For: 18y 11m 24d
  • Gender: Male
  • Location: New Zealand

yeh.. understand what you mean, and they can be under tension- but... if you undo the top bolt and then raise car up - the tension of the car weight drops away with the bottom arm. Unless you have a taller than standard XR spring - I think you will be fine. I was removing an XR6T standard front and putting on the SL King Spring. You can also check by grabbing the spring with the weight off the wheels - you can see that the spring turns back and forward easily - hence no tension.

I also would not recommend doing this with the sway bar attached and one wheel on the ground, as the spring pressure from one side will be pushing on the other.

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  • 1 year later...
  • Donating Members
  • Member For: 13y 4m 16d
  • Gender: Male
  • Location: Merimbula

$1055 to my door. Ordered late last friday received here tuesday arvo, not too shabby so close to xmas.. I typed Bilstein AU into google and went from there.

Can not wait to fit the fronts..

Put Bilsteins on my XC 30 years ago.

Cost me $600.

You've got a good price considering the time.

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  • Member
  • Member For: 14y 9m 10d
  • Gender: Male
  • Location: brisbane

I found getting the bolt under the ecu out a pain in the arse, I tried deep sockets and uni joints but just couldn't get the angle so I used a snap-on easy out to remove the tamper proof bolts holding the ecu in and moved it out the way. It made the whole job a lot easier. I just replaced the tamper proof bolts with standard M6 flange bolts, should be easier next time. I don't know why they bother putting tamper proof bolts there!

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  • 10 months later...

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