[drawz]

Originally Posted by fastboatster

Come to think of it, if I move the spring so that it comes fully into contact with one rubber bumper, it’ll move away from another. Let’s say that now it’s a “happy” medium, most likely caused by the fact that these are not OEM springs but a close match. Or not, and something like this doesn’t happen, say, for H&R springs. Let’s just finally throw those onto the car.

You would rotate the metal & rubber upper spring mount and leave the spring in place so that it still makes proper contact on the bottom.

[fastboatster]

Got one strut apart myself and realized that lower spring pad gap will be there unless you guide the lower coil into its seat with a screwdriver and also lubricate it with water or saliva. Otherwise it will hang on the seat's lip. I think that's why they rotate the spring slightly so that the lowest coil doesn't hang on the lip. However, saliva and a screwdriver will guide it through. Upper part is tougher, I couldn't rotate the spring seat with shock shaft even if I compressed lower coils. Imo, they'll have to fix it tomorrow, I'll go talk to them. I got really tired getting the shock apart and putting it back together ( upper spring seat shifted slightly hence there's still a small gap there)

[fastboatster]

One shock is in after all the adventures, brought the shocks to a different shop which worked on this car before. They told me they still could not get one shock completely perfect and there were some gaps still. Another one came out very good. Let’s see how it functions on the car. One quick question I have is routing of brake wear sensor cable - should it go between the strut and sway bar link or go around the strut link? Here’s a pic I got with it sitting as of now

[gjm120]

Originally Posted by fastboatster

One shock is in after all the adventures, brought the shocks to a different shop which worked on this car before. They told me they still could not get one shock completely perfect and there were some gaps still. Another one came out very good. Let’s see how it functions on the car. One quick question I have is routing of brake wear sensor cable - should it go between the strut and sway bar link or go around the strut link? Here’s a pic I got with it sitting as of now

I had the same question when doing suspension work and can't remember what I ended up doing. Maybe look for some tutorials on changing brakes and see if you can find anything useful.

[fastboatster]

Finally got this all installed. What I found out is that the right factory strut also had gaps between the rubber spring insulators and spring ends. It also was leaking and the adjoining sway bar link had a lot of play and slop and clicked as it did so. Replaced both sway bar links as well. After the test drive it became apparent that I need to do the rear shocks. Front now doesn't bounce at all.

[fastboatster]

Really like how it drives now, drove it for 35 miles today. Should be perfect after the alignment