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Back alley suspension work...
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Posted by Lutfisk [Email] (more from Lutfisk) on Sun, 17 Jul 2005 15:03:01 Share Post by Email
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I finally had time to install my KONI's after my move across country... I must say the weather out here on the left coast is much nicer, and my bicycle has been getting more use than my 9-3.

I thought I'd let people know how one might complete suspension work when everything that can go wrong does go wrong... it ended up being time consuming, but everything turned out well.

The Mission: replace worn and creaking shocks with shiny yellow KONI sports and new mounts and install final polyurethane bushing in front suspension (I have the VRK on the car,but was replacing the rubber control arm-subframe bushings with Powerflex ones).

The Place: dim, cramped basement garage in Seattle with plenty of friendly spiders

The Tools: Aside from the usual metric wrenches, torque wrench, and lexicon of creative expletives, I had an 18" pipe wrench and strap wrench (strut nuts), pickle forks (ball joints), hammers, jacks and jack stands, hacksaw (see below), cold chisels, 32 mm socket (for the hub nuts), breaker bar, two-arm puller, c-clamp, and spring compressors.

The Parts: Koni Shocks, Powerflex bushings, Saab strut mounts, SKF bearings, Saab ball-joint/tie-rod boot kits (4), new ball-joint, tie-rod, and hub nuts, CV boot clamps, grease, brake cleaner, and P-Blaster.

The Ordeal: First, I started with the rear shocks. These went absolutely smoothly and took 1/2 hour. Life was good, but Fate was stifling a laugh.

Moving to the front suspension, cracking the hub nuts was no problem, but trouble began when my first cheap craftsman floor jack broke. That was exciting. Luckily I had a jack stand positioned properly, and nothing bad happened to the car, my cat (who is very helpful during repair jobs, or thinks she is), or me. I also had a bottle jack for back-up, which I used thereafter.

Getting the left front brake rotor off took a lot of hammering and cursing, but it acquiesced in the end. There were no problems removing the ABS sensors or calipers either (lots of PB-blaster). Popping the tie-rods and ball joints was not too bad, but I destroyed the rubber boots in the process (I had planned on this and had replacements and Mobil-1 grease). I easily removed the control and radius arms too, and used the two-arm puller to pop out the old bushing. Installing the poly bushing went smoothly, and reinstallation was unremarkable.

The first real problem arose when I could not get the driveshaft out of the hub, no matter how brutally I hammered it, so I resigned myself to refitting the shocks while the strut was still attached to the car by the driveshaft. I released the upper strut mount bolts, and worked the strut out from under the fender. I compressed the spring, and used a cold-chisel to pop the metal cover off the old strut mount to afford me better access to the nut. I then used a Dremel to grind a channel into the rubber/metal side of the strut mount so my 21(?) mm box wrench could get a good purchase on the nut while I held a 9mm socket on the center rod. After some harrowing slippage (this was all awkward because the strut was still attached to the car), the nut gave and I removed the old mounts and other suspension bits and the compressed spring.

Then the fun began. The strut was angled up at about 30 degrees from the floor, and I needed to get that massive nut off. I clamped my 18" pipe-wrench around the nut and my strap wrench around the strut, and did a sort of Russian split with a foot on each handle, balanced 2 feet over the ground. After much creaking and groaning from ligaments and metal parts, the nut loosened, and I removed it and the old shock cartridge. I installed the Koni insert, and tightened the included nut in the same ludicrous manner in which I had removed the old one, and put everything back together. Everything went well (I used the c-clamp to get the tie-rod installed to the strut, and a jack (newly purchased) under the ball joint to do the same thing). Having had enough for the day, I went to bed thinking that the worst was past. I was wrong.

The next day it was on to the passenger side strut. The brake rotor was not coming off this side without a fight, and the driveshaft again was mated fast to the hub. Additionally, the ball joint did not want to pop. As an academic exercise, I decided to go ahead and attempt the project anyway. I undid the control arm bolts, replaced the bushing, popped the tie-rod, and dropped the strut-cum-control arms, but it wouldn't swing out from under the fender. I then pulled the drive-shaft/spider gear out of the transmission, which necessitated the purchasing of some CV joint grease and a CV boot clamp for reinstallation. After binding the driveshaft end and transmission socket in plastic bags, cardboard, and duct tape to protect them, and compressing the spring, I had the strut out from under the car and was attacking the top mounting nut. Using the same technique as before (chisel, grind, wrench), I tried to get the nut off, but the 9mm socket rounded off the center rod. Bugger. It was at this point too that I noticed my Abbott subframe brace looked pretty bent upwards and to the rear (I guess I had hit it on a speed-bump or something), so I removed it... I had noticed my tires wearing strangely, and will look into getting an alignment soon. This did not brighten my mood.

After much grinding, hammering, chiseling, and cursing, an alternative to popping the nut off dawned on me. Grabbing my trusty hacksaw, I proceeded to saw through the steel rod of the shock. I used a screw-driver to hold the dust boot away, and sawed at an angle between the spring coils. After about 40 minutes (this is HARD steel), I finally sawed through, and everything popped off as expected. I repeated my straddling wrench-move and proceeded with replacing the strut cartridge, bearings, and mounts without further problems. I now had to reinstall the spider gear, which involved repacking the joint with CV joint grease and installing a new clamp on the boot: no problems here, though it's pretty messy. Everything else went back together smoothly, though wrestling the heavy strut/drive-shaft combo up under the fender with one arm while trying to install a top mounting nut with the other was a test of my limited physical strength.

The ride with the Konis is much smoother, and creaks when hitting speed-bumbs and other irregularities have now dissappeared. The final poly bushings too makes the steering feel quicker, though I still need an alignment before everything feels perfect. I'll play with the shock adjustments and figure out which setting I enjoy most.

Anyway, the moral of this long story is that replacing the front shocks can be done with minimal removal of parts: You don't need to remove the brake rotors, hub nuts, or ball joint. You don't even have to remove the top nuts if you have a saw and a penchant for destruction. Of course, all of these processes would go smoothly given the right tools, but it is not always practical to buy them (pin wrenches?). In retrospect, if I were a less parsimonious person, I would have considered exchanging cash with a mechanic instead of spending two days on my garage floor covered in grease and metal shavings.

Best,

Lutfisk


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