Spring is just around the corner...
(get it??
)
Last night, Stehle and I began the spring swap on my legacy. Neither of us have done this before, so it was a learning experience for both of us.
Here's what happened:
- Started with the broken spring first.
- Strut assemblies came out of the car a lot more easily than I thought they would.
- Noticed that the Lower control arm busings on the car are indeed very worn out
- Spring compressors I borrowed from my dad bottomed out with only minimal tension being applied to the spring.
- Hours were spent running to princess auto buy better spring compressors. I found some for 40% off, woohoo!
- New spring compressors still bottomed out before much tension was applied to springs.
- New spring compressors had to be used in conjunction with the old ones to "leapfrog" the springs and apply them to more coils and apply more tension.
- Working on the broken spring sucks because of the steep angle of some of the coils. (Spring compressor, please don't fall off!!)
- 4 spring compressors in total were used on one spring. James thought we were crazy for doing this until we showed him how un-effective 2 spring compressors were.
(4 compressors also doubles the time you would spend releasing the spring compressors) - STi springs only needed 2 spring compressors to clear the top of the strut assembly.
- Second strut took less than 1/3 of the time because now we finally kinda knew what we were doing.
- Re-installed suspension bits, and torqued them down. Re-installed wheels, called it a night.
Yep, we actually used 4 compressors. We are pro's at this:
Lanky and soft OEM spring vs STi Spring.
This is the broken spring, all together it would have sat almost "one coil" higher.
Conclusion: I really suck at changing springs, and I should never work on my own car again. We never actually got to the rear springs by the end of the night, and now one of my strut mounts if making a brutal noise when the steering wheel is turned far to the left.
Other results:
- Front of the car sits close to the same height as before, but just slightly lower.
- A lot of the looseness in the front of the car that you used to experience over bumps is gone now. I fixed something!!!1
- Car is a lot more well controlled over bumps, and it feels as if turn-in is a little sharper now. These STi springs work really well with the Spec B Billestiens.
- My car has STi pedigree now
Rear ones should be a bit easier than the front ones were. I say this now, but I will start working on this and it would probably actually take almost 2 days
Should be interesting to see how this turns out though. I'm confident it would make the rear of my car actually sit higher than it does now. We will see...
