As some of you readers may know, my car struts were going out. When I bought my car from the original owner, he had installed a suspension kit that made it drive better, but rode a little rougher and lowered the car down about 2 inches.
Evidently the kit that was on the car is one of the best in the industry, but it also needs regular maintenance, more than most suspensions don’t require. In fact, after a certain number of miles (I have had conflicting reports, some say every couple of months, while others say the life of the tires is a good time) they need to be removed from the car and sent in to the manufacturer to be rebuilt.
So, with that in mind, I decided it would be much easier to just remove them and install the original suspension from the car, which the previous owner gave to me as well.
Last weekend I went over to Joel’s house after doing some online research to find out what we had to do and we proceeded to do the work. The drivers side front was a pain in the butt at first because the two main nuts did not want to come off right a way. After some severe wrenching, they came off. The passenger side was much easier and we basically got the front end dismantled in a little over an hour.
The installation however was not fun. At least not at first. We got the OEM strut/spring housing in and bolted on to the engine compartment area. The trouble was actually getting the hub to allow us to put it into position to be bolted in. Evidently you need to do something on the other side of the car and some how something aligns in the differential or transmission that allows the wheel to swing up into place. I still don’t understand exactly what we did, but anyway, it worked.
The back end went much better. We had to use a jack to pry the suspension down from the body more so we could fit the old one back into place, but compared to the front, it was cake.
So, after about 4 and a half hours of work (not including the couple hours for breaks and lunch), it was done. The car sits up about 2 inches higher now and it rides smoother, but not as much as I expected. So really, the only thing it lost was a little bit of the “looks” coolness factor.
And, it saved me almost $500! I still had to get the alignment done, but that was reasonable.
Joel – you are a wonderful friend! Jonn, you are cool and don’t need 2″ lower car to be cool – Cool is having $500 in your pocket and a really good friend who helps you!