Just Lowered My Car!

[robcarync]

sup guys! as you may all know by now, i just got my hands on some h&r racing springs and tokico illumina shocks/struts...

and i just finished installing them now!

here is the story of our trials, errors, and poor luck

i got the parts from UPS tuesday...and installed the rears tuesday afternoon/evening. it wasnt too bad at all...problem being we decided to go at it without a spring compressor. that made it kinda tough, but we managed to pop them in.

today i got the fronts in. that was a bit more tough. we got the spring compressor from auto zone, and got to work jacking up the car and taking the passenger side off. two of the three bolts holding the strut to the hub/steering arm are seized on there with some locking compound...making it VERY tough to get off. it took FOREVER to get them undone with a breaker bar, as there was little room to get a lengthy rotation. the third bolt was easy...and we un did the top and the strut popped out...then we notice the little red spongey things on the strut...aka the 'absorber'...but ours was ten years old and disentegrating, so we needed to replace it. i drive to the BMW dealer, pick up the two absorbers, and drive back (an hour of driving, plus time in the shop). get back and we compressed the spring, take it off...and we notice something fishy...the h&r spring is barely more than HALF the height of the stock spring when both are uncompressed. i was starting to wonder if the springs didnt fit the TI...when assembled with the new strut...the spring was actually kinda loose on the shock. my only idea was that the race springs were stiffer...so they were shorter, but didnt compress as much. we decided to go with it and pop the passenger side strut back on. that took about 4ish hours or so...

then came the really bad part.

the driver side assembly. we take it apart like before...except as my pops is cranking one of the seized bolts off, the head snaps off and we now have a 1/2 inch of solid steel seized into the bolt hole on the steering arm with locking compoud. wow that is NO GOOD. we took 5, thought about drilling it out, thought about just picking up a new steering arm ($$$), and thought about just crying. the strut was already removed, so we went ahead decided to get the hub off.

so for that we went up to auto zone and returned the spring compressor and rented the tie rod seperator tool (the angled fork like thing used to pry the control arm ball join and the hub apart). we come back and hammer away at the ball joints. one pops off and the other ball jointish thing pops off too (after some heavy hammering) we disconnect the sensors and remove the hub (calipers already removed). damn we see how much of the bolt is still in the hole (the whole thing...the ENTIRE hole was plugged) we decided to start drilling that sucker out...starting small and gradually getting bigger as we go through about 5 drill bits that snapped on us. once we get most of the center drilled out, we get my pops tapping tool...and by turning the tap slowly, we managed to crank out the bolt threads that are stuck in there. we clear out the hole some more, and are relived to find out that after spending hours drilling through all this stupid steel, the threads are still intact.

next we go ahead looking for the M12 bolt with a 1.75 pitch that is 20mm long...NO ONE has one! we checked ace hardware, auto zone, and advance auto parts. we find one that is 30 mm long, but that is too long...we buy it anyway for 94 cents.

so right now we got it back together, but we still need the right bolt...rihgt now we have the long bolt in there, with another nut screwed up on it like a spacer...kind of ghetto but until we can get to the dealer tomorrow...it will have to work.

then we let down the jack stands....and we are hoping the car stops dropping before it lands on the ground...as we were still concerned about the vast decrease in spring size....it drops pretty low, but i am pleased to see that after all that damn work, the parts seem to fit and work very well!

i have yet to drive it, as i want to get the proper bolt on it first, but it looks great!


ill have pics up tomorrow!