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| Springs and Struts |
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So, I FINALLY got a pair of decent springs and FINALLY got around to sticking them in. Though I didn't get any struts to go along with them, if you'ree gonna be putting some new ones in, just do what I did to the stock ones and you'll be fine. Struts are pretty much struts. Anyways, you can see the springs to the right. They're Progress springs, and are supposed to drop the car about two inches. However, I really think they dropped it a bit more than that. Maybe I'm just still getting used to them.
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Now, the first thing you gotta do is get the struts out of the car. Each one is held in by three bolts at the top of the strut tower and two huge bolts right above the brake. In the second picture, one bolt is already removed, if you're wondering what the fuck two bolts I'm talking about. It makes it easier if you take the two bottom bolts out first. By the way, for those of you who are still wearing diapers and drooling on yourselves, yes, you must take the wheels off the car to do this. After you have all five bolts out for one strut, take it out from the bottom of the car by pushing it toward the center of the car from right above where the two bottom bolts screw in. It should the come out easily. Once you have a strut out, you must now compress the spring so it doesn't take your fucking head off when you loosen the top strut nut. You can rent these things from Autozone. That's what we did, at least. It's a pretty easy tool to figure out. Make sure, though, that you get as many coils compressed with each compressor you can, and that the compressors are as far away from each other as possible (i.e. exactly opposite to each other is optimal).
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Once the spring is well compressed, you have to now get that nut off the top of the strut. It's a bitch, and it's MUUUUUUUUUCH easier to do with two people. The best way to do it is to stick the round end of a wrench around the nut and a TORX wrench into the hole in the top of the bolt. They're pretty well stuck on there, so you're gonna have to fucking pull. MAKE SURE YOU'RE SPINNING THE NUT IN THE CORRECT DIRECTION. We wasted about a fucking hour thinking the goddamn nut was rusted as fuck onto the bolt, trying the biggest levers we could come up with to pry it off. However, the truth was eventually discovered (that being that we're some truly quality tards) and it came off just fine. You can see what I'm talking about to the right. That's the right position.
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When the nut is off the bolt, pull off all that stuff on top of the spring. You might have to use a screwdriver to pry off the rubber part that the spring is actually in contact with. Now, take the spring off, release the spring compressors EVENLY AND SLOWLY, and slide the new spring onto the strut. Because the new springs will probably by much shorter than the stock springs, you most likely won't have to compress them. We didn't, anyway. Once the new spring is seated properly, put the rubber part back on, trying to get it to sit in the same position as it did on the stock spring. You can see the groove in the rubber where the old spring sat. That's where you want to aim the end of the new spring. Put all the other parts back on the strut in the right order and screw the nut back down. It will stop turning when it's fully tightened. Now, take the strut, feed it back up into its proper position in the wheelwell, and bolt it back in. Easy as pie, kiddies. Should look like the picture to the right when it's all said and done.
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After all four struts are done, make sure EVERY BOLT is tightened to the proper specifications, put the wheels back on, and slowly let the car down. The drop was visually much more drastic than I thought it would be, but I was later told that a two inch drop is actually considered a pretty significant movement. Who knew? You can see to the right what the car looked like after all was put back together. Here is a shot of the post-Progress front wheel gap, and here you see the rear wheel gap. Dayamn! I wanna thank Dan The Man for helping me out with this project. He's got a nice 94 SC1 with a DOHC swap he did himself. What a beast. Anyway, playaz and hoez, until next time, keep it rizzeal for shizzeal, fooz.
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