Day 14 ~ Suspension

  Another weekend passes me by it seems. Actually, it has been pretty stressful for the family this week with the first week of school kicking in. My wife teaches in elementary, Jr. hi, and Sr. hi, and I help out the school on a lot of last minute details. So Saturday we took a chill day resting, playing, and doing some chores around the house. It was good to relax.
  Not all was fun and games, though. I got to work separating the front spindles from the old  struts, trying to leave as much as possible in tact. That can prove to be more of a pain than it may be worth, but it's not likely to be easy either way. I definitely recommend having a helper. I worked mostly alone as usual and ended up ripping the abs sensor wires on both sides as a result of not being able to hold all the various heavy pieces when things went wrong. Hangar wires are a bit flimsy for anything larger than a caliper. Oh well, it won't take long to repair later on when I work on wiring.
  We reuse the upper mount hardware on the new strut, so I had to use a strut spring compressor to disassemble the old struts. Take your time to do it safely here as there's no reward for risk taken. I got a nice set of spring compressors from the local auto parts store on rental. It's good sturdy stuff made for handling the job.
  I ran into a couple tough spots today though. Getting all that heavy stuff lined up just right by myself was a bear. I even got help for a few minutes, but it didn't make it any easier as we both couldn't seem to get the right angles worked out. I would recommend disconnecting at least one side from the anti-sway bar so you can work one side independently from the other. One side on the front struts slid into the spindle just fine. My biggest hold-up today was the other side that did not. Someone at the factory apparently forgot to mic the bottom of the tube at the weld. After getting it sufficiently wedged in all but the last quarter inch, and trying in vain to get it to go the rest of the way, I finally decided to take it back off and start over. Wow, I thought the old one was hard to get off. Even using a pry bar in the back to spread the clamp didn't do much good. After I gave it a good piece of my mind (and some finger-flesh too ouch) and finally got it  back off, I had to use some 800 grit sandpaper to smooth out the scoring left by the strut's welds. Then I took a small flat file and worked on the welds for a while until I got them down to the cylinder diameter. QC is undeniably important. That strut should have been tossed in the "no-go" bin. Oh well. I'm still counting the time as inevitably every builder is going to face a few snags along the way.
  The rear struts got hung too, but they're really just on there loosely as I wasn't able to get the tie-rod to budge. We'll be using it, but I'm going to have to replace that bolt and boot there unless I can get it to cooperate. I picked up another tool to help, but with all the trouble on the front end, ran out of time. I was hoping to have the wheels back on this weekend, but at least the front should be good for now.