any body have some info on how to install srpings. i was thinking of doing it my self and haveing a friend help. but dont really know how to do it. or would it be a hell of a lot easier to have a shop do it? only thing with that, is i dont want to spend the money.
I did most of the spring install on my car by myself, I had help on the last one. It is do-able, but it's not what I would call fun. With two people it should go a lot better. But it's still a lot of crawling around on the ground. For tools, you want the following. Spring compressor, $12 one from harbor freight works fine. Good sockets, especially a good 19mm socket. I'd suggest craftsman 1/2 drive if you don't want to break stuff. Long 19mm box-end wrench. Big breaker bar, mine was 28inch, barely long enough for one of the bolts. Torque wrench. Impact wrench may help for some bolts, but you need a massive one (1000+ ft lbs to get all the bolts with impact) Dremel tool for cutting the brake line brackets on the struts. OR vacuum pump + brake fluid for bleeding brakes if you remove the brake lines (messy...) Penetrating oil. Wide flat blade screwdriver and good pliers to take the brake line clips off. Couple big pieces of cardboard so you don't have to crawl on cold concrete. Floor jack plus two good jackstands, no need losing your head over this . There are some step by step tutorials out there on how to do this (scoobymods.com, etc). But here's a few things I ran into. Mark the top camber bolts on the front struts before you take them loose. (big 19mm bolt on the hub with marks on it.) Pay attention to the orientation of the top mounts. The new springs may not have the same number of winds, so you can't just rely on where the end of the old spring was. Don't torque the top bolts on the rear strut top mounts until you have the strut re-installed in the car, you can't rotate those like the front. Remove the sway bar if you don't jack up both sides of the car, or you might damage your cv joint boots trying to get the strut out. I don't know how much a shop would charge, but it took me the better part of a weekend to get mine installed, granted my car is older and rustier which makes the bolts a real pita. So, consider what your weekend is worth dollar wise and see what a shop charges. You'll probably need an alignment when you're done anyway.
i did mine last year. it was fairly straight forward. the top bolts are easy enough to get out, for the back ones try and use a long extension vs. using a tiny ratchet. some problems i had. getign the rear struts out was my biggest problem. a few hits of wd40, and a 1000ft lb air gun barely got the 2 main bolts off. i would reccomend a large piece of pipe (like a floor jack handle). beyond that it wasnt so tough, i left teh brakes on, and teh cv. i removed the brake clip from teh strut so i didnt need to blled the brakes. when it came to putting the springs on i didnot have spring compressors, so i used C-clamps. it was scary but they worked. what my friend does when taking struts apart is just point it away form everythign and put the air gun on the top bolt, and let her rip. parts fly everywhere but it works. before you take the strut off, its a good idea to talk some chalk or something visible and mark the strut and the piece it bolts to on the bottom, so you can line it up easier (get alteast close to an alingment). good luck
Its a good idea to realign after changing springs. Scribing the camber bolt isn't going to give you the same settings you had before, just somewhere in the region. I hav found that for most stockish weight springs for subarus, spring compressors aren't terrible neccesary, but I always rented them fro free from autozone. you do want to be careful not to drop the strut directly on the CV as well, as theyre more fragile than they look. You don't need to unhook any brake lines or use a dremel for anything. You can just unclip them from the strut and push them out of the way.
Nice, they must have changed the struts on the newer cars, on my struts the bracket for the brake line was solid, you couldn't get the brake line out without either cutting the bracket or removing the line on one end. Having open brackets would have made the job a lot easier.
you need at least two pple to do that. If you need help I'm glad to help you, I need to do my spring as well.
you sure? my car is a 95, and i didnt need to unhook my brake lines. mayne your little clips were rusted on or something. when you are putting the strut back together, and are tghtning that top bolt. try to not let the strut spin, i hear that if it spins to much it will wear something out and the strut will go dead faster.
yeah, the bracket where the clip is, it's solid. even with the clip off, the brake line still runs through the bracket. This is what I'm talking about, look on the lower strut, you can see the bracket has been cut and split open to allow the brake line to come out. compare to this, which has an open bracket
tbone, do you know how to do it? and do you know of any body that has a lift? or dont you need one. i will pay yo like $30 or $40 bucks to help me. that would be awsome. i get them on monday.
oohh i gotcha. i must have disconnected my brakes then. hhmm..... well brakes arnt hard to bleed. mnstily: you wont need a lift. you just need a floor jack, jack stands are nice, and a garage/nice place to work. just jack teh car up by the rear diff (rear) or front crossmember (front) that will lift both the wheels of the ground. thats what i did and it worked fine. here are some pics of what i did. noticed how i jacked up the car byt the center diff, and the jimmy-riggin3ss of the c clamp. (FYI: that Spevinator in teh pics)
