well guys, hopefully in the next week i'm going to have some suspension work done. i've talked to people about which local shop is best, and i've heard alot of good things about this one. so today, i went and talked to the guy, this might change alittle, but this is what i'm planning to have done...

he's going to build custom sub frame connectors(which he claims are thicker then most aftermarket ones) and weld them in, box my lower control arms and install LCA relocation brackets, replace my front and rear sway bar bushings and my control arm bushings with poly ones, and replace my springs(which are shot) with factory iroc ones(i want to keep my ride height, because i the roads around me are not flat at all... tons of hills and tons of bad driveways to get up for lowered cars)

anyway, he told me this would all probably cost right around 1000 dollars. does this price sound about right? from everyone i've talked to this guys quality is great, and he knows what he's doing. i thought the price sounded about right, just wanted to see what some other people thought.

thanks for any replys

That is to much money and a waste to throw that much work at inferrior parts. You can have fully developed SFC's for 200 and have them welded for $50 at your local greese monkey wrench place. Also, tubular LCA's are tons better than boxing the stockers and will run you a cool $100. They are held in with two bolts. 5 minutes of work. You should be able to accomplish the same stuff with better parts for half the cost. Keep shopping.

i wouldn't pay $1000 for that. but then again i'm someone who would prefer to save some money and do it myself. First, buy some aftermarket control arms, don't just box your factory ones, cuz then you'd need new poly bushings pressed into them and that would almost run the price of aftermarket. next lower control brackets aren't needed for a non-lowered car typically. some of my friends have put them on and not gained anything in their 60' times at all. get real subframes as well, and just pay $50 or whatever to have them welded in. hope this helps.

do it yourself, much more satisfying and heck you could do a ton of things with that! Come on man! Learn the way of the force (Lightsaber fires up)

thanks for the imput guys. i really didn't want to do all the work myself, one because of time(i don't have a ton) and two because i've never done anything like this before(although i probably can find people to help, and also find a place to do it in).

ok, so, it looks like i'm gonna have to do some searching on installing this stuff.

so anyway, for some more questions, how do these parts sound then?

spohn LCA+the mounting kit
spohn poly bushing total kit
moog OEM replacement spring set from spohn

my other questions are, is a panhard bar really needed for a car that isn't lowered? is it worth the money for the improvement it will make?

and, with spohn's tubular front A-arms, is anything more then the "normal" one really needed for a car that will just be for street use? the cars a daily driver, so it will never see anything too extreme, for that type of use is it really worth the money for ones with spring boxes and/or end rods?

thanks for taking the time to read and answer these questions, lol, i'm sure they are all really newbieish.

I also vote for DIY. $1000 is crazy. With the right tools it wont be as hard as you think. Paying the guy to weld might be a good idea (thats what I do, I cant weld for crap), but alot of that stuff you can do yourself and its not that bad. I'd say the hardest thing out of your list (aside from the welding stuff) would be doing the front springs. But its still do-able. You can change your rear springs in like 5 minutes.

thanks, as far as welding goes, i have an uncle who is a welder, hopefully he can hook me up with that, the only problem is getting the car and him and his welder together... that might be hard.

Check out umi they have a deal on ebay for tubular lca and panhard rod for $160 you can't beat it.

holy crap, I need to become a professional suspension installer to con people out of their hard earned dollars.

i changed my oil today, and i as i was i was doing some looking around at my suspension. really, now that i look at it, i must say it does look easy. for the most part, it all looks like all i'm doing is pulling off old parts, and replacing them with new stuff. i'm sure i'll run into some issues along the way(like old bolts that don't wanna come out or things), but it doesn't seem like there's really that much there that i can mess up. it almost seems idiot proof, unless you don't put things back the way you found them.

the one thing that does seem hard are the springs, i suppose i need to make sure i have a spring compressor, right?

I did it without one just put a jack under there disconnect it and lower it down slowly.

for the front you need a compressor... but the rear, you just have to lower it down on a jack, then raise it back up and set it into place.

For a thousand dollars you could buy springs, shocks, struts, panhard bar, lca's, sub frame connectors, poly aarm and sway bar bushings. The only difficult things to change would be the front springs/aarm bushings which you could have a shop press in and out for thirty dollars. Any muffler shop can weld your subfame connectors in for cheap, pull the interior out at your house so they don't burn up your carpet from the underside.

I say do most of it yourself or take the car someplace else to get the work done, a thousand dollars is a lot of profit for that guy. Don't be surprised if labor costs 2/3 the price of your parts to install, from the sounds of it he's charging too much.