Project Reasonably Swift

[Tristan]

Boris, I've some thin carbon fibre sheet here, if you want me to post you an A4 size piece, to put around the timer, and over the buttons. It follows a gentle curve nicely.

[Boris]

Ok time to ask for some help.

Screenshot 2022-05-13 200704 by , on Flickr

Here is a snippet from the work shop manual. Note the item higlighted in green. My tops dont have the out marking. Typically I didn't take note of their positions when removing or fully read the manual before hand. Any way I reassembled the first side and used a hole in the top as the out marking and it appeared to line up with indentation from the end of the spring. Then when doing the otherside my assumption may be wrong because the hole wasn't in the position where i assembled the left hand side. Now the curve ball is the RHS had a broken spring and 2 witness marks on the top cover from the end of the spring. So is it possible it could have rotated?

Do you think the image on the right where I've marked the angles with red line would be a good indication of the final position. IF the top is rotated the the angles will change.

I hope that makes sense.

[Aontroim]

I wouldn't like to give a yes/no answer as I'm nowhere near qualified for that (although I know many on here are) but I wonder:

Is it safe to assume that either side was installed correctly beforehand? As in, has either spring been replaced before? If so, do you know/trust the last person who was at it to have been as meticulous as you are? (Side note-mega respect for your attention to detail, an unfortunately rare trait!)

Also, I read that a few times to get my head around it. Does it suggest that 'OUT' on UPPER seat should line up with end of spring/bracket OR is it that 'OUT' on spring seat should line up with something on the upper seat and the bracket at the bottom?

As in should the 'OUT' be on the spring seat or the upper seat? Have I misunderstood or are there two things you put on top of the spring?

[Boris]

Thinking about it further all I need to do is seat the spring on the bottom mount and then align the angle of the top cap to spring. I was. Concerned the angle of the top cap was going to affect the alignment of the shock but it doesn’t it’s controlled by the shock bearing.

Aontroim the out is to align with the centre line of the mounting to the knuckle

[Aontroim]

Ah good man, glad you got sorted!

I'd only be familiar with strut tops with 3 bolts or obvious asymmetry which make it impossible to install incorrectly.

Again, fair play for the attention to detail, good on you sir!

[Boris]

Finally all the springs are in. I was always told RTFM, read the f'ing manual. From now on I'm going to change that to RTFMP, read the F'ing manual Properly. I had to re do one side as I installed the bearing in correctly. Not a big deal in reality as I can now do a complet spring change in less than half an hour.

All in all a fairly straight froward job, the bigggest pain was getting rusty cruddy bolts out. The fallout being one lost to damaged threads and one sheared.

Took a bit of effort to get these guys moving
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Fire fixes everything
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Out with the old
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Can't beat the right tools
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Undoing my good work
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Turns out I also had a broken spring on one side.
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Shiny and new
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Not sure if its any lower.
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[Smythy411]

Good work! I love them spring compressors, must invest in some. The ride height usually takes a couple days to settle down after changing springs, so it will probably end up a little lower after a drive

[Aontroim]

Looks great but yeah, I'd say it'll look even better in a day or two.

How do you find the handling now with new springs and no snapped coils?

Always frustrating when you're fighting snapped/seized bolts but I always find it satisfying to know that if I ever needed to do it again, the groundwork is done and it should come apart much easier.

As you say, knowing how to do a specific job is handy too because you've no problem if you ever decided to change again etc.

Loving this project.

[Boris]

Radio V2 thanks to Tristan for the CF

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Also got the car weighed it is 1080kg

[Tristan]

No worries M. Worked out nicely.