Suspension rebuild and disc brake swap...by a noob for noobs
Before setting the car down, I made sure all the nuts that should be tight were torqued according to the shop manual. For nuts that need to be tightened at ride height I made sure they were "finger" tight. That includes the upper control arm cam bolts, lower control arm pivot shaft, strut rod at both ends, and shock absorber mounts. I also set the ride height adjusters back to approximately their old settings. With all that done, I put the wheels on and lowered the car onto the floor.
As I was lowering the car, I kept an eye on the rubber brake hoses to make sure they weren't kinked or twisted awkwardly.
Lookin' good, if I do say so myself.
Following the shop manual procedure, I adjusted the ride height. First, you measure from the floor to the lowest part of the blade that is pushed by the adjusting bolt.
Then you measure from the floor to the lowest part of the steering knuckle arm.
The difference should be 1 7/8". The height needed to be adjusted up 1" on passenger side and 1.25" on driver side. 16 quarter turns (passenger) and 20 quarter turns (driver) got it adjusted perfectly on both sides. (Later on I decided both sides were too high, so I adjusted them down a bit until the stance looked right.)
For the final tightening of the suspension nuts, I needed the suspension at ride height but I wanted the wheel off for easier access. This was tricky without a lift. First, with the car on the floor I noted the distance from the LCA bumper to the frame rail (approximately 1/2"). I jacked up the car at the K-member, removed the wheel on one side, set a jack stand under that side's frame rail, and set another jack stand under the rotor. Then I lowered the car carefully onto both jack stands. If the LCA bumper was not about 1/2" from the frame rail, I adjusted the jack stands and tried again.
With the suspension set at ride height, I tightened the UCA cam nuts, LCA pivot shaft nut, strut rod nut at the LCA (on one side I couldn't get enough leverage to get that one all the way to 105 ft-lbs), the strut rod-to-frame nut (which I had to torque by "feel" because I didn't have a long enough socket to use a torque wrench), and the shock absorber bottom and top. On the top end of the shock, I didn't use the torque setting, but tightened it just to where the rubber part of the bushing squished out to the edge of the metal part. (I think the new shocks have different bushings than the original factory ones.) Then I reinstalled the wheel and set the car back down.
When both sides were done, I eyeballed the alignment: camber, caster, and toe-in.
Thanks for keeping me safe, guys!
Before setting the car down, I made sure all the nuts that should be tight were torqued according to the shop manual. For nuts that need to be tightened at ride height I made sure they were "finger" tight. That includes the upper control arm cam bolts, lower control arm pivot shaft, strut rod at both ends, and shock absorber mounts. I also set the ride height adjusters back to approximately their old settings. With all that done, I put the wheels on and lowered the car onto the floor.
As I was lowering the car, I kept an eye on the rubber brake hoses to make sure they weren't kinked or twisted awkwardly.
Lookin' good, if I do say so myself.
Following the shop manual procedure, I adjusted the ride height. First, you measure from the floor to the lowest part of the blade that is pushed by the adjusting bolt.
Then you measure from the floor to the lowest part of the steering knuckle arm.
The difference should be 1 7/8". The height needed to be adjusted up 1" on passenger side and 1.25" on driver side. 16 quarter turns (passenger) and 20 quarter turns (driver) got it adjusted perfectly on both sides. (Later on I decided both sides were too high, so I adjusted them down a bit until the stance looked right.)
For the final tightening of the suspension nuts, I needed the suspension at ride height but I wanted the wheel off for easier access. This was tricky without a lift. First, with the car on the floor I noted the distance from the LCA bumper to the frame rail (approximately 1/2"). I jacked up the car at the K-member, removed the wheel on one side, set a jack stand under that side's frame rail, and set another jack stand under the rotor. Then I lowered the car carefully onto both jack stands. If the LCA bumper was not about 1/2" from the frame rail, I adjusted the jack stands and tried again.
With the suspension set at ride height, I tightened the UCA cam nuts, LCA pivot shaft nut, strut rod nut at the LCA (on one side I couldn't get enough leverage to get that one all the way to 105 ft-lbs), the strut rod-to-frame nut (which I had to torque by "feel" because I didn't have a long enough socket to use a torque wrench), and the shock absorber bottom and top. On the top end of the shock, I didn't use the torque setting, but tightened it just to where the rubber part of the bushing squished out to the edge of the metal part. (I think the new shocks have different bushings than the original factory ones.) Then I reinstalled the wheel and set the car back down.
When both sides were done, I eyeballed the alignment: camber, caster, and toe-in.
- Camber: with the offset UCA bushings I had noticeable negative camber, so I adjusted the aft ends of both UCA's outboard until I couldn't see the negative camber by eye.
- Caster: I didn't worry about trying to set caster. Basically, I wanted as much as I could get, and I had previously set it as high as it could be. Raising the camber inevitably lowered the caster.
- Toe-in: I adjusted toe-in as close to zero as I could by eye, by adjusting the tie rod lengths. I tried to make equal adjustments on both sides so the steering wheel would be nearly centered.
Thanks for keeping me safe, guys!