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I have Koni struts and some lowering springs on the way. I was wondering if any of you did your own install on this. Any advice? I have the FAQ and a service manual on CD, but personal advice is always valuable! I'm off the middle of next week and am hoping to do it then.
TIA

Well from what I hear, the konis will seem as if they are broke cause you can push em down and they tend to not pop back up, but that is from the adjustable dampner, and Terry says its okay, so it should be good.....

also i hear that some people are having trouble with the adjustable tool fittin in the rear strut towers when they go to adjust em after the install...

other than that, i dont know much about it, ive got H&Rs... but still hopin for GCs and Konis to drop in my lap.... :p

Thanks for the info.

Anyone else?

Took me and Blorton about 10hrs to do mine.

Main problem we ran into was getting the old struts out of the spindle, and the new ones in.

At one time, we made use of a 15" long piece of hollow metal pipe, empty keg, piece of 2x4, and a jack at one time. 'nuff said.

John

It was a PITA on my car.. If I told my story it would just compeletly discourage you from doing it. Used a similar method as JV for getting the old strut out...



Have fun!

Hey now - both of those jobs had one major drawback.

Insufficient lubrication of the participants.

There are some difference's in the pre-98's that really threw some wrinkles into perry's upgrade. Or it could be that neither of us had a clue. However - the garage eventually charging $90/corner would've turned out a bunch cheaper. Especially if you grade on the PITA factor. But then, we did it all wrong, engaged in tool abuse, blah blah blah. JV's just took a long time and was a PITA, but perry's - well, that was just one for drug therapy.

Dan - repressing
99 Cougar V6 - on stock suspenders

Damn, I hope you two didnt make that keg empty!!!

That was prob 8 out of the 10hrs right there and prob 7/8 of the fun!!! :p

Okay, I did Antonio's up in the CEG and you guys just need a little info... you absolutely CAN do this yourself!

1. Smoothy: the koni's are struts, they shouldn't come back up on thier own! That's what the springs are there to do! Struts only damp out the motion of the tires, they do not one thing for the rebound. Think of them as something similar to pushing a spoon through yogurt or jelly... when you quit pushing it just stays where it is. The springs are there to push the car back to where it was.

2. The trick to getting off the old strut is to not be afraid of taking a sledge to the suspension knuckle. Soak the bottom of the strut where it bolts to the knuckle in WD-40 or similar and let it sit for a while while you take out the bolts. When the bolts are out and you're ready to take the strut out of the knuckle, just wail on the thing with a small sledge, it's cast iron and you ain't going to hurt it. That's how we did Antonio's and it wasn't tough after we quit being squeamish about it. Similarly, the sledge comes in handy when you go to reinstall (with lots of wd-40 again).

3. The only real problem I had was getting one of the nuts that hold the upper mounting plate off of the top of the rear strut. I had to take it to a garage and ask the guy to hit it with an impact wrench.

4. You can't really get the adjusting tool in to the adjustment stem on the rears once they're installed, like Smoothy mentioned. Put some thought into how hard you want your ride to be before you put them in and PLEASE remember to adjust them before you install them!

5. Be CAREFUL around the springs. They aren't kidding around when they say that they can really hurt you. Get some spring compressors from somewhere that loans tools free and USE THEM. I had to flip the threaded rod around to get them to fit up in the wheelwell, but it wasn't that tough and it was worth the peace of mind to deal with them.

With the info you can find on here (and it sounds like you have) you can get this done yourself. A helper might come in handy too, but just take your time, be patient with it and be careful, it should be fine.

Hope that helps. I'll try to answer anything else you might want to know if I can.

Good luck!

BigWalton,
Thank you for the info. Sounds like alot of work, but should be no problem. Luckily I have access to a garage with all the tools but a spring compressor.
Wanna help? j/k

I'd love to help but you're not exactly what I'd call local. I did Antonio's simpy because I wanted to know what I was going to have to do whenever I finally get around to getting my own. Always nice to learn on someone else's car!

I forgot one other thing, I would reccomend NOT doing it on a frigid, windy day in early March... but I think that won't be a problem for you.