DrBlockHed

My shocks and springs are in, I'm on to my sways

Does the suspension need to be loaded to put them on? Or can I use jack stands, I have ramps but with the tire on its a PITA to get to the end links.

Also, my car has the bracket on the drivers side with the double ended bolt, do I need to reinstall the same way? Accessing it is another PITA. Can I just use a regular bolt?

Thanks!

clg82

iTrader: (2)

My strano springs and koni shocks show up tomorrow...sway bars on Thursday, and from what I've read they can be installed without weight on wheels....how did your front install go with the springs and shocks....pretty straight forward installation? I know the rears aren't too bad.

JROC

Do not put the sway bars on with an unloaded suspension.

Edit:
I do recommend getting the old sway-bar off with the wheels off first though just don't set and tighten the new bars without the weight of the vehicle resting on the suspension. In all honest you are likely going to break at least 3/4 of the end-links holding the factory sway-bars on as they are likely rusted to crap. My car only had 32K on it when I did my bars and 3 of 4 of the end-links broke off and the other was too bent to re-use if had would of wanted to. The stock end-links are small, weak, and prone to corrosion. I used my impact with the wheels off the car after breaking the first two with the car resting on the tires. Much easier to remove without the wheels in the way.

DrBlockHed

I used new moog parts for the front, I bought them before the install and I'm glad I did. My car has 77k miles on it and is pretty much garage kept and the top nuts were rusted to all hell.

It's really straight forward, you don't need to compress the strain springs much but you do need to compress them some. Take your time, follow the write ups (and I watched blue knights video), just make sure when you tighten down the nut on top of the shock the mount is contacting the shock and not the spring.

I also snapped my end link bolts removing them.

Rears were a joke, took like an hour or so for both and I've never touched a shock before in my life.

DrBlockHed

Why don't put them on unloaded? Not second guessing, knowledge is power!!

JROC

It will lock it in a bind as the suspension sits unloaded. I know because I did this. When I put the car down on the wheel the swaybar had it locked and it wouldn't budge a bit. Besides it's a straight pita to get on with the wheels up.

Here are pictures I took when I was trying to figure out what was wrong as I could tell that something wasn't right. The ends of the sway bar should be point fairly parallel or slightly upward with the chassis and not down like in these pictures.





This should be mostly parallel with the car.





See how the end of the swaybar is being pulled down by the uncompressed suspension? You don't want to tighten it up like that.





The bushings sure didn't like it.

DrBlockHed

Thanks for the pics, I'll be using ramps