Re: HOW TO: 4000 suspension [very long]

[AUDIDUDI@delphi.com]

> The way you have to remove that nut is to hold the strut shaft in place
> with its 7mm allen-head recess while turning the nut.  The right tool
> for this is a 3078, pictured in the Bentley.  An alternative suggestion
> I tried was to turn a 22mm socket with a pipe wrench while holding an
> allen key through the square drive hole.  This did not work at all; a pipe
> wrench on a socket couldn't hold enough torque.  Another suggestion was
> to mill the sides so you could hold it with an open-end wrench.  I ended
> up making my own 3078 by cutting 60 degrees out of a 22mm deep socket.
> So the tool *can* be fabricated, but it's probably easier to buy it.

A 22mm socket on an air impact wrench works well, too ... if you're going to
throw everything away, you don't need to worry about damaging anything but I
usually wrap a shop towel around the strut shaft and grab it with vice grips
when necessary to keep it from rotating.  You won't nick it if you're really
careful... 
 
> First, you need to compress the spring.  This is of course a little
> dangerous; use common sense and go slowly.  Beware of the two halves of
> the compressor walking towards each other; if that happens back them off
> and start over.  You can prevent it by cross-torquing a little at a time
> (I alternated giving each side one full turn).

I've found that clamping a small vice grip on the spring "downhill" of each
compressor will prevent this ... better safe than sorry (btdt...).
 
> Let me tell you, you need tools here.  I'll spare you my story, but
> suffice it to say that I did not buy the tool, I regretted it, and that
> modifying a socket is *not* the way to go.

I've done this job at least 15 times over the years (on the same car, even!)
and have never had any problems using my modified 14mm deep-wall socket.  If
I ever stumble across the correct tool, I'll buy it but until then, this one
works just fine for the amount of torque involved.  
 
> At this point my old strut disassembled internally and left a puddle of
> oil on the driveway.  Kitty litter cleans it up.

I don't know if it actually helps or is another urban myth, but I pour some
coolant in the strut tube to help transfer heat from the insert to the body
... you can also use oil but us racer-types generally use coolant.
 
> FYI, those two settings -- moving the ball joint, adjusting camber, and
> moving the tie rod end, adjusting toe -- are the two main adjustments
> in an alignment, which is why your car now needs to be realigned.

Agreed about the tie-rods but I've never had to loosen the balljoint camber
adjustment bolts to do this job (BTW, if you have an early 4k, here's a tip:
The balljoints for the later cars have an offset to increase caster -- swap
these onto your early car and you can improve the handling slightly and get
a lot more negative camber since BOTH the arm and balljoint have adjustment
slots now instead of just one.  You shouldn't have any problems getting 1.8
degrees of negative camber this way.  Just make sure that your motor mounts
are in good shape since you will pop an inner CV joint apart when the rotor
rocks over under acceleration if you don't.  This is because the additional
negative camber takes up a lot of the plunge in the joint ... I broke a few
of these back when I was autocrossing my '81 4k before I figured this out!)

> With the weight on the wheels, pull off the black dust cap and loosen
> the 17 mm nut.  You will need to hold the shock tube with an adjustable
> wrench (I would actually have preferred a hex socket).  The best tool
> is an offset box-end ratchet; a nonratcheting box-end will be tedious,
> because the nut is locking and does not spin off with finger pressure.
> You need to wrench it the whole way.

There is a special tool available for this that should be available at just
about any auto parts store (I believe it's distributed by KD Tools).  It is
well worth the money since this job is very tedious and for someone with OJ
sized hands (like me), there isn't a lot of room in there...

     _             _             
    / l       l o l  \       l o   Jeffrey Goggin
   /__l l l / l l l  l l l / l l   AudiDudi@delphi.com
  /   l l_l \_l l l__/ l_l \_l l   http://people.delphi.com/AudiDudi