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Rear shock swap fail - LONG
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Posted by skibumm100 [Email] (#3255) [Profile/Gallery] (more from skibumm100) on Mon, 18 Jun 2018 05:18:59 Share Post by Email
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The rear shocks are shot on my 96 Aero so I bought a pair of Sachs shock from Eeuro. I tried to change them out this weekend. This job is waaaay tougher than it should be. The top stud was easy. The nuts came loose with no problems. The lower end is a completely different story. For starters, somebody thought it was a great idea to use the same bolt for the lower shock mounting and the rear sway bar. I bought new rear sway bar bushings and mounts, just in case. I consulted the factory manual and jacked the whole back end up with a big floor jack. I won’t discuss the part about not being able to close the rear hatch due to body sag when it’s suspended this way. One of the rear sway bar mounting bolts snapped off, even after soaking it with PB Blaster for several days. Getting that broken bolt out took several hours as it had deformed the threads before it broke. Lots of heat and swearing. Right next to the fuel tank…..nice. On to the other things that ticked me off. Thing one- The new shocks don’t have the hour glass shaped rubber bushing installed in the shock. They’re shipped loose. Why the hell do they do that? That stupid bushing has to be installed in the shock before you can install the shock. It’s like shipping a new car with a box of pistons in the trunk, the new owner can put them in later. The bushing is oversized and hour glass shaped so it will cock every time you try to press it in in a vise or whatever. What’s the secret to installing them in the hole in the shock? The normal way would be to ship split bushings. The next problem is that the metal bushing inside the rubber grommet on the installed, blown shock is frozen solid to the bolt that holds the shock and sway bar to the rear axle mount. All this stuff has been soaked for a week in PB Blaster but it’s very difficult to get anything down in there. I got the nylock nut loose without too much trouble and tried pushing the bolt out with a hydraulic porta-power with a 1” cylinder and jacked against the back of the caliper. I only succeeded in bending the lower shock mount and the sway bar mount. Bushing is still locked solid. Back to my comment about the genius who decided to save a bolt and combine these two mounts. You can’t just cut out the shock bolt because the sway bar is still in the way. With that sleeve locked to the bolt I’m pretty screwed. I would consider cutting through the bolt in several places but you can’t get a sawzall or cutting wheel in there. Too much stuff in the way. Changing a shock should not require disassembly of the entire rear suspension on the car. Anyone have a similar story on rear shocks that they could share their solution. I basically spend about 8 hours working on one shock and had to put it back together and give up for now. My next try may be to burn out all the rubber bushings or possibly cut the mounts off the rear axle, change the shock and weld it all back together. Once you start an operation like that, there’s no turning back. That would suck. Sorry for the rant.

posted by 165.225.34...

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