Stopped by Sears today, they said they will not do the spring swap as they will not do any work with any product not purchased through Sears...

...but I did goto my local shop and theyre more then willing to do it for me, time pending, Ill be starting this install in a couple hours.

I think our swift springs and tanabe springs customers would love this so im adding a link to our thread!!

Can you post some pic after installing the springs plz

Yeah the rears are a breeze, about 10 min a side:tup:

I would say that the shops assessment of 4.6 hours is pretty accurate. I "started" my install today and ran into several problems. Not even my air tools and impact wrenches could get the bolt off the front. The The spring compressor got had one with a bad thread. All in all it took me 4 1/2 hours to do one front spring. Exhausted, and bleeding. I stopped for now. I will do the other front tomorrow. I hope the rear springs are as easy as everyone says. By the way, not all springs are aligned the same, So even though you alighn the spring on the rubber top hat in the same position as stock, it wont necessarily fit in the car. I put the nismo spring in my 40th, and the top hat had to be rotated 90 degrees to fit. I had to take the assembly apart again, remove the rubber stopper ring on top, and rotate it. What a pain in the a$$. Lesson learned. All these issues aside, I thing the other front will be much easier. Oh yeh, no need to take off the tower brace :-)

Holy misspellings. Sorry about that. Think you guys got the idea

So I finished the other 3 springs today. Part of my problem the first day was a very cheap spring compressor. The thing was eating itself. Rears are way to easy, only small issue is aligning the bolt when reinstalling. GL all :-)

Not bad. Did Swifts all around. Front passenger side has a popping noise though. Checked bolts over and everything is tight. Wonder if it's that rubber if it's not aligned correctly on the bottom of the spring...

Ok, I checked that rubber/plastic piece that sits near the bottom of the spring and it's positioned correctly. Not sure where to go from here. Also, it appears that the two front wheels are pointing outward. Thinking that I'll go get that aligned tomorrow. I don't have any camber kit on the car. Just springs and spacers. The spacers I put on last weekend and no noise issues with those.

That popping sound appears to be coming from the passenger side only and I cannot feel it in the steering at all! So I don't believe anything is loose......

An alignment sounds like it is in order.

Pizza & Beer...:bowrofl::roflpuke2:

H&R Spring Install
 

OK I went with the H&R springs for price mostly. From all the pictures I've seen for comparison I liked the H&Rs. Ordered mine nearly a month ago. They were on back order but came in today. Can't pick up a spring compressor till Saturday so I'm putting the rear on tonight.

Little help Please...with maybe a stupid question here but which way is up on the springs? I've seen photos of Swifts with the tighter coils up and then I've seen other images where it appears they are at the bottom. The OEM springs are evenly spaced coils!

The tighter coils go up.

Thank you. Hoping the front goes as easily as the rear did.

The fronts are not as easy as the rears, but not too bad -- difficulty-wise. Good luck and send pics when youa re done.

Having to take the entire strut to a friends house tonight. My compressor is lacking!!! :mad:

So hopefully tonight and of course rain moving in tonight. :icon17:

cool guidance for me to do so...

Job is done. They feel and look awesome! :happydance:

Pics of the new look should be up in the next couple days. Rain today and I need to bathe and wax.

Job review
I didn't take any pictures. Don't see the need as this thread covers almost everything. An impact wrench is your friend!!! Wish my compressor would push one. That was the only real hindrance for this backyard mechanic. The back springs were easier to complete than changing the oil (which I did while the car was up off the ground) though I was confused on which way is up for the springs. The fronts were a different story. Without an impact wrench I had a very hard time getting the nut off the bottom of the strut. I didn't round them but they not as pretty as new!! Other than wishing for some of the latest in tools I got the struts off with no other problems. No impact wrench means I was cranking down on the spring compressor with a 19mm opened ended wrench. I finally grabbed a lifeline and called a friend who does have an impact wrench and compressor to push it. Mine only manages 4.5scfm@90psi. With his help we got the new springs on the struts in about an hour. For a backyard mechanic this was probably the spookiest part. The thought of a failure of some kind while compressing the springs - Painful. Back in my garage 40 miles away about 7pm last night. I figured 30 minutes each side to put them back on. First one was on in 20 minutes. No extra hands available so simply grabbed the brake caliper and pulled up to get the 3 nuts on the top started. Torqued that pesky bottom nut to 75fp. Passenger side has some wire harnesses that run under the brace and make getting the 3 top nuts on a bit challenging. Dropped one. 15 minutes to find it. B@*s!a^d. Finished up with no issues after that. One last look at everything. Put the wheels back on, off the jacks and a 10 mile run around the block to test everything. No shimmies, shakes or rattles. Drove in to work this morning (26 miles) and feels just great. I'm stoked.

I started this job Friday evening and finished Monday night. Total working time was about 4 hours.

I posted a picture taken on my phone in my album

I'm glad you found the write up helpful! Give me some rep if you don't mind!! :-P

So if I tighten the piston rod lock nut to specs (44 ft/lbs) the spring and everything else should be settled properly with in the entire strut? and I notice a lot of ppl saying to align the top hat as it was before. shouldn't you be able to move the the strut around to position it even when the top hat lock nut is in place?

Yes you can rotate the strut.

Thanks bro... I will be installing swifts, wheels spacers, and camber arms. I have the camber bolts but I'm not sure I will need them, i really don't want to make the stock camber bolt-hole bigger unless i really need to.

Sweet!

Whats the drop on the car now?

I'm assuming you're talking about the TOE bolts. The rear camber install requires no modification of the vehicle. And if you use the camber kit it doesn't hurt to use the toe bolts. Enlarging that hole really isn't an issue.

How can you rotate the strut once it is assembled with the spring & top hat nut in place? Mine won't budge and the shock isnt lining up correctly on the lower control arm

you have to compress it. I took a pic of it before so I could align it properly.

I know that, thought you mean't you could rotate the strut once it's already assembled without the compressor, then I got confused :icon14:

If the spring isn't aligned with the top it's a PAIN to fix. You'll have to compress it and loosen it.

true

^This lol

I placed the spring and top hat in the position where the stock spring met the top hat, bad idea. I had to use a crowbar to twist the strut to make the bolt fit in. Haven't had any issues whatsoever and I play hard. I would highly suggest compressing the spring again and aligning the top hat so that the bolts fit properly. My strut was off by probably 30deg or so...:ugh2: Crowbar fixed that.

Wow! that is a lot to be out and adjust by 'crowbar'! I was out a couple degrees maybe..

Can you send a link? I'm very interested

Great DIY.

I'm planning on doing this + rear camber arms sometime over the next couple of weeks. For a newbie DIYer like myself, this is pretty daunting, but the shop I contacted today quoted me over $800 for install of springs, camber arms, and alignment. I promptly hung up after telling them it was too much, but it makes me doubt that I can find anywhere to install for less than $150. So DIY it is.

Used an air impact and it completely rounded the lower strut nut bolted to the sway bar link. Any way to get it off without an air chisel?

For the fronts, is loosening (and tightening) the top nut while the shock is still installed a bad idea? Is there enough movement in the front suspension to install the shock + spring + top hat uncompressed? If so, the spring can be compressed with a floor jack and everything torqued down in place. This would basically use the weight of the vehicle as a spring compressor. I've done this in the past with other vehicles and it worked great. I don't really trust spring compressors...

Print off the FSU.pdf and RSU.pdf on that link whn you do the install.

Gonna be doing this mod hopefully this week, I'll post up how the experience goes!

Has anyone ran into an issue trying to remove the 19mm lower control arm bolt? I had no issue on the driver side but the passenger side does not want to budge. I let it soak in PB blaster and using a breaker bar. The driver side came off easy so I am guessing Godzilla himself torqued the passenger side down. Any help would be appreciated. If nothing else probably going to have to cut it off at this point.