I finally got around to installing my new VBP stock-rate spring today, did it at work. Took me eight hours, much longer than I thought. People kept coming by to ask me all kinds of questions about the car, wondering what I was doing, I guess that was why it took me so long. That and the old spring was a real bugger to remove. I used a simple two-jaw puller to remove the tie rod ends and the ball joint, and I did not have to jack up my car as far as I've read that you have to, my 17" jack stands weren't even at their full capacity and I still had plenty of clearance to remove the old spring. I did have to remove a lower a-arm, and once I did that the old spring practically fell out. The old spring was a frankenstein contraption held together with electrical tape and used part of a tire as padding! I'll take a picture of it tomorrow. The previous owner was a real dunderhead.
Anyway, I couldn't believe the number of things that had to be removed to get to the spring: the tie rod ends, the ball joint, the sway bar, the shocks. To get maximum access to everything, I even removed the rotors and the speed sensor line. The spring shields came off in three seconds, but still it was another thing to remove. The last thing was the center brackets, it's very tricky to remove them, if you remove them last then the curvature of the spring is still forcing them downward and there was no way I was going to remove them all the way and have the spring shoot down at me, so I had to jack up the spring, remove the brackets, and then slowly let down the spring. For every little thing, you have to either compress or decompress the spring, I think this was one of the things that added to the time it took me. Also, the sway bar is an absolute b*tch to reinstall. It came off okay, but did not line up properly when reinstalling and I stood there for two hours wondering how in the world I would get it back on there. Brute strength and channel lock pliers did the trick.
All in all, I'm glad I did this, the car is now back at the stock ride height and I can go over most speed bumps without fear of knocking another hole in my oil pan or scraping the fiberglass floorboards. If I did it again it might take me three hours, but my advice to anyone considering this is plan to spend a LOT of time on it.
Anyway, I couldn't believe the number of things that had to be removed to get to the spring: the tie rod ends, the ball joint, the sway bar, the shocks. To get maximum access to everything, I even removed the rotors and the speed sensor line. The spring shields came off in three seconds, but still it was another thing to remove. The last thing was the center brackets, it's very tricky to remove them, if you remove them last then the curvature of the spring is still forcing them downward and there was no way I was going to remove them all the way and have the spring shoot down at me, so I had to jack up the spring, remove the brackets, and then slowly let down the spring. For every little thing, you have to either compress or decompress the spring, I think this was one of the things that added to the time it took me. Also, the sway bar is an absolute b*tch to reinstall. It came off okay, but did not line up properly when reinstalling and I stood there for two hours wondering how in the world I would get it back on there. Brute strength and channel lock pliers did the trick.
All in all, I'm glad I did this, the car is now back at the stock ride height and I can go over most speed bumps without fear of knocking another hole in my oil pan or scraping the fiberglass floorboards. If I did it again it might take me three hours, but my advice to anyone considering this is plan to spend a LOT of time on it.
