Should I Do The Lowering Myself

drftking · Post by **drftking** » February 25th, 2005, 4:21 am

Is it really that hard to change out the struts and springs. If I were to do it ar home is there anything special that you would reccomend to make this job a little easyer.
THX

neutral · Post by **neutral** » February 25th, 2005, 5:24 am

Not too hard to do, saves big $$ & gives you a chance to inspect everything else in those spaces as well i.e. brake parts & lines etc. The only special tool really needed is a coil spring compressor similar to the one at this link. http://www.mytoolstore.com/toolaid/suspn01.html -for illustration purpose only, cuz you can find them cheaper elsewhere on the Net or some autoparts stores have em available thru a tool loaner policy. Paid ~$20 for mine. The online manual has pics and procedures in section R on something like pages R-11 & R-28. Check pg. R-1 for specifics.

In addition to the spring compresoor, you'll need a decent set of metric socket drives and wrenches etc + a pair of jackstands to support the car.

MarkMoore · Post by **MarkMoore** » February 25th, 2005, 8:24 am

i'm also thinking about this... i wanna do the zx2 conversion, both the tokico struts and eibach springs... how many hours work are we talking here?

Neil · Post by **Neil** » February 25th, 2005, 8:52 am

For all 4 struts i got quoted 8 hours labour from 3 dif places, so if its the first time doing it yourself id imagine depending how fast you work and everything go's smooth 8-10 hours maybe? this is providing that the qoutes they gave me wernt BS, ive never changed my struts on my own yet so i dont know how long it takes yet.

MarkMoore · Post by **MarkMoore** » February 25th, 2005, 9:49 am

wow that's longer than i thought... knowing me, and how thorough i am and how i like to take my time, it looks like this is gonna be a 2 day project... but hey, 2 day's w/ my mx isn't a bad thing... so it should be fun

Neil · Post by **Neil** » February 25th, 2005, 9:52 am

MarkMoore wrote:wow that's longer than i thought... knowing me, and how thorough i am and how i like to take my time, it looks like this is gonna be a 2 day project... but hey, 2 day's w/ my mx isn't a bad thing... so it should be fun

The important thing is that even if it takes you two days, you save a nice chunk of change, and its a learning experience, im lookin forward to doing this myself when the time comes

DavidOS · Post by **DavidOS** » February 25th, 2005, 10:06 am

holy SMOKES

they quoted you 8 hours thats retarded!!!
if you can swap 2 springs in under 1 hour which means takeing the strut out and everything with it to put the new spring in then to put the strut on is the same.
In other words 2 hours MAX.

This is how long it took the guy at mazda to put my new front coils in cause of the recall, and this is while i bullshited to him about the ZE swap which he knew more then most ppl about as he owns a protege, 323, mx3 etc..etc.. lots of cars.

your getting ripped off at 8hours labour.

93SOHC · Post by **93SOHC** » February 25th, 2005, 1:05 pm

so its not really nessecary to have an impact gun to get the top strut bolt off? I have done hundreds of strut jobs while I was a mechanic and working at a machine shop, but I always used a wall mounted compressor and an impact to loosen the top bolt, because the shaft usually spins. If there is a way around this, let me know and I wont waste my money having a machine shop swap out my struts and springs.

hgallegos915 · Post by **hgallegos915** » February 25th, 2005, 2:34 pm

i always rent the spring comressor tool from autoxone for 20 dlls then wehn i return it they givre me the money back...you dont need impact wrench to adjust the compressor. Used a big wrench. For the nut on top, i used a huge handwrench and walla it came out..when it spinmds i used one of those red wrenches..forgot the name.. easy in 20 mins each strut.

93SOHC · Post by **93SOHC** » February 25th, 2005, 2:39 pm

I know you don't need the impact for the compressor, I was just worried about the strut shaft spinning, while takin off the top bolt. Could this "red wrench" you're talkin about be a pipe wrench? I was thinkin that might work...

Teal_93 · Post by **Teal_93** » February 25th, 2005, 4:43 pm

Here is a tip for getting the top bolt off the strut without an impact.

The first thing to do before even jacking up your car: squirt some WD-40 on the nut, let it sit for a bit, then put the socket on the bolt & loosen it.

It's worked on the last 2 cars that I have done.

You can just pop your hood & try it now to see if it will loosen up. Just rember to tighten it back up.