I am having a hell of a time trying to get my front springs in. I've searched and found what other people have done, nothing really seems either too safe or a bonafide easy way to do it.

I've tried jacking up the control arm with the spring, car is shifting all over the jackstands when I do this.

Tried an internal spring compressor cranked down as far as I can crank it, and the end where you put the ratchet in keeps me from slipping in the springs as it hits the A arm there.

I just had an idea that since the LCAs and rear are attached to the car and the rear springs are in, that perhaps if I dropped the car down on the back and chocked it I might get more stability and be able to jack up the A arm with the spring into the pocket. At the moment its on four jackstands.

Does anyone have any other tips? Or anyone local who might want to come over and give me a hand?

I did search but I don't like many of the suggestions there or I can't quite manage to do what is suggested.

The springs are Eibach Pro Kits. And the A arms are UMI's newer version.

Thanks.

 

You should bhe able to install these springs.without.the.spring.compressor. bolt.the arm to the .car, you should be able to get the spring in place, and with a floor jack under the balljoint slowly compress things, checkiing to make sure the top of the spring remains seated properly. Its a bit of a juggling act but possible.
You have air tool? They make using the spring comp much easier

How far is andover from flemington?

Where are you putting the jackstands?

If.the back.is.on stands and doesn't.need .to, put it back down. It willo add stability

 

I thought it was possible to do it without the spring compressor, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out the trick. The jackstands are under each of the subframe rails on the body. Two just in front of the LCAs on that end, and the other two are where one would normally put them on the front subframe rails. No air tools, though I do have an electric impact wrench, however the torque that it puts out to tighten is abysmal. I can try the impact, though I doubt it will do me much good.

Andover is I'd put at about an hour or so from Flemington, Newton and Sparta are about 10 mins north of me, Island Dragway is 30 min to the southwest of me. So put the top of the spring in place then use the floor jack to jack up the A arm. I'll see if I can get it to pivot far enough to get the spring into the arm's cup.

 

With the arm all the way down, the spring will.go.right.in, once things get started it usually works well. It will just take a little juggling orf things to get everything started. Your a little too far for me tonight unfortunatly. But you can do it! I have faith in you!

 

I'll give it a shot. I did notice it wouldn't take much if I was able to get the spring to pop into the cup in the A arm. Block of wood to protect the ball joint, stick in the spring and hope for the best. Will try. Last time I tried to put springs in a car it was a 73 vette and that was even worse than these if I recall....

 

I tried to do it. I can see what you mean and it should work. But I couldn't quite get that last little bit to pop in. I wasn't about to kill myself tonight to do it. So, if its sunny out tomorrow or over the week end, I'll drop the rear of the car and chock it. giving me the better stability. I'm guessing if I get the A arm level with the ground, it should pop. I tried to do it with a crow bar but...it got stuck and I was moving the whole car to get it back out. So, trying again when its light out and I can actually see. If I still can't get them to pop, I believe there are a couple others nearby on the NJFBOA boards who might be able to give me a hand. You're welcome to come up and give me a hand if I can't get these to pop soon.

 

When I do it, it seems as if getting the lowest coil of the spring into the spring pocket on the A-arm is an impossible task. But it's really not that bad. What you have to do is compress it, then put it in place. The a-arms can be completely dropped, and you still cant get the lowest coil into the spring pocket, and once you do you cant get them to stay.

Well all you need is a big crowbar and a helper.

Here is what I did, in my cases having the ball joint area on the ground was fine.

Step 1, hook end of crowbar on either the center side of the spring pocket, or the hole in the A-arm. I think in my case I had to use the spring pocket area.

Step 2. insert spring, with isolators taped to it, into the upper spring pocket, and hold it up with the crowbar. The crowbar needs to be on the bottom of the spring, and the spring needs to be in the upper pocket.

Step 3. This is where it gets hard to explain. What we are doing is using the crowbar to compress the spring, and then sliding it into place. The way you do this is by sitting on the ground. Put your butt on the floor, and push up on the crowbar and push the spring down the either horizontal or slightly past horizontal (as in you're pushing the spring downhill) with your feet. Use both feet to control the spring and keep it from falling off the crowbar.

The key is to compress the spring and push until it pops into place. It may take you a little while to get the hang of it, but I spent 30 minutes trying to figure out how to make the spring compressor work, and gave up, and using a crowbar I had both springs in the car in a matter of 10 minutes. 7 minutes was just getting the technique down. You do it a few times and you start to figure out, and then it's super easy. The only hard part is keeping your crowbar anchored in place, and keeping the spring indexed, but it's REALLY not that hard.

4. As you push the spring down the crowbar (Which is holding it into the upper spring pocket), when you get it to about where it needs to be, you pull the crowbar out, or leverage it so taht it levers itself out, and the spring will pop into the place into the spring pocket. DO NOT MOVE YOUR FEET. The amount you're compressing the spring will not be enough to kill or maim anyone,, I had it pop out on me a bunch of times, it's fine. Just dont put your toes under it or something where it can get pinched, but that's impossible to do. You are pushing the spring with the bottoms of your feet, and as you pull the crowbar out, hold the spring in location wtih yuor feet.

5 This is where your buddy comes in. As you hold the spring there (in my case, it wasnt completely necessary, as it would stay in place, it just didnt look like it wanted to stay there since it was curved at sharp angle, and only the far side was barely over the spring pocket bulge in teh A-arm. ) with your feet, have a buddy grab a jack, and jack up under the a-arm anywhere you can get to it, and just keep jacking it. As you get the spring to a point where it's not about to come out, get your feet away from it, and then continue to compress it. THIS part is where it's important to be safe, as you start to compress the spring more. I usually hook a chain around the spring and a-arm here, but if you can't it'll be okay.

From here it's just a matter of getting it to the point where you can button things back up.




This is where you're aiming to get the spring at first. Just use a crowbar as a guiding ramp and compressor, and use your feet to push it into place.



If you use the flat end of the crowbar on the hole in the center of the spring pocket, you will have to compress it a little more. If you can get ti to hook on the spring pocket itself, which is a little tougher to get it to stay in place, it will be a lot simpler to get the spring to slide into place.

I know it sounds hard/complicated/scary, etc, but I felt WAAAAY safer doing it this way than messing with spring compressors becuase you're only compressign the spring as far as you can with muscle alone, and just enough to get it to hook on the spring pocket, and the spring compressors are way harder to work with.

Some springs must be shorter than others, because there was no amount of jiggling or finagling I could've done to get the spring to just "fall right in". It required a little grunting and foot pushing to show it who was boss.

Anyway I do it this way all the time now. Once you get the hang of it, it's super easy/simple.

 

You are struggling way too hard.

Don't use chains, or other sketchy tricks. Take your spring compressor and use a piece of pipe as a spacer at the bottom. So pretty much have the rod with a washer, pipe that slips over the threaded rod and then another washer. Then the slip on arm and then the threaded arm. This should give enough clearance to compress the spring and not have the rod go over the spring. Also use a Impact to compress it. I would not hand turn it since even then I am very sketched out when messing with a compressor.

Also use a good quality compressor. The one from my neighbors from Harbor freight broke when doing this. I picked up the one from Oreilly and works perfectly. Also its the one with claws at both ends not the one with the U base at the bottom. Those are crap.

 

Pic #5.

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/susp...nt-spring.html

JamesC

 

James, I did just that with the compressor, the issue is the bottom where you drive it, hits the A arm preventing it from going in. there is room for further compression so I'll try that again. I doubt the electric impact I have will do it but I'll try it.

The passenger side is just about in when I jack up the arm but as Inferno and 86 have said you need to leverage the last coil in. I'll give the spring compressor another try. The other idea I had was to compress it with the spring in the upper pocket, thread the rod through the hole in the A arm as opposed to trying to lever it through.

 

We put springs in here at the shop using a combination of most of the above methods. Mainly we use the floor jack, spring, crowbar method and no spring compressor. Probably one advantage is having the car on the lift makes it more stable than on jackstands.

If we're feeling official we use a safety chain as shown but it's a lot smaller links, like what you'd have for safety chains on a motorcycle trailer.

And on the spring compressor, we've yet to find one that works great both on the bench and is easily removable once the spring is in the car. It's like you can't have both.

Installing these can be tough but when you get everything lined up right they go right in...

ramey

 

Ok guys, as I suspected, my impact will not compress the spring further. So thats out. I tried dropping the rear, that resulted in my torque arm (which I forgot was not bolted on the back end) popping off and screwing up the driveshaft alignment....great. I got that pretty much back to where its supposed to be. The fact that the rear was only connected by the LCAs was probably the issue there. If I had the panhard bar on it probably wouldn't have had a problem. Anyway, I guess I'm doing this with a floor jack and pry bars. Guess its time to get a bigger pry bar. I only have a 3 or 4 foot crow bar and at 5'7" I need more than that. I asked for help on the local boards (NJFBOA) to see if anyone will come by and give me a hand who may have done it before. I tried a couple times today with no success...why does something seemingly so simple need to be such a bitch?

 

Alright, brought the spring compressor back to the store, got the rental money back. I picked up the biggest pry bar I could find at Sears. Will try again.

 

I have only done it once but seems like it was really simple. let a arm hang all the way down, put spring up in hole, Jack up jack and it goes in.

 

Which Spring compressor do you have? This is the one we are talking about..

click

The one that wont work with our cars is this one which most places like Autozone rents out.

 

The spring compressor that you claim works is the one I was using and had no luck with.

Getting it to compress the spring enough to get it into the car was easy, but the spring compressor itself was too long to fit with any clearance. And then if you set it up so that the spring had room to get in properly, you couldn't get the compressor out of it. If you set it up so that you could actually manipulate the spring compressor, it would end up gripping on so few coils that itw as hard to get the spring to compress any significant amount. The compressor we had had some issues, was partially bent, etc, so that played a small part, but me and my buddies spent way too long messing around with it. There are easier ways to skin that cat.

Way easier to just use a crowbar as a compressor/ramp to slide it into place.

But if you seriously cant figure out how to push up on the crowbar with your arms while sliding the spring down the bar with your feet, you can always try this method.

1. Remove the a-arm mounting bolts, completely separate the a-arm from the car.

2. Attach it to the balljoint/spindle/strut mount or wherever you decided to disconnect the a-arm from the strut. The point is to attach the a-arm to the car via the strut/balljoint/spindle.

3. get two jacks, put them under the a-arm near each mount. And then insert the spring into the spring pockets.

4. Compress the spring via the jacks at the a-arm mounts. When you get the a-arm mounts into place with the jacks, just slide the bolts through.

I dont particularly like this method, it's way harder, and you have to be clever with jackplacement, sometimes you'll end up lifting the car off jackstands before you can get the a-arm bushings lined up with their mounts. It's also tricky to get the bushings lined up. But I've done it that way too before I got the crowbar technique down. It's possible, and I think I remember reading that method in my shop manual actually. Anyway I just add this so you dont start to get frustrated and panic, there are many ways to get this done, and I've never used a spring compressor successfully.

 

I did this trick




Except my spacer pipe is about half the size of that. Solving the issue with the top of the rod going past the spring and interfering with the install.

This worked with Moog springs and they were a pain to do. Now with my Intrax springs I did last week I did run into a problem and that was that I placed the top claw badly and I had the spring compress on it. I then had to have my father pry with a crowbar and me having to slide it off.

I have not run into any issues with my compressor, makes installing springs a breeze. I usually just compress enough to the point that I can index the spring and jack up the A-Arm. I have even loaned it to a few friends for their installs. Although I did have to loan them my heavy duty impact gun as well.

 

Hey all, yes I was using the compressor with the hooks as pictured above with the pipe. Tried 4, 4.5 and 5 inch pipes and I still had the problem of the compressor itself was too long to make the pivot through the hole in the A arm. I've been cranking it down by hand because my impact will not tighten. Breaks stuff loose but has no torque to tighten stuff down. As I said I got the biggest Pry bar I could find at sears and will try that method again.

The closest I got was with the floor jack on the A arm, and jacking it up, but the issue was I could not get that last little bit of the coil to pop through without running the risk of having the car fall off the stands it seemed. Though it was compressed almost all the way when I got it that far. I am hoping that with the pry bar I can get it to pop in earlier before the car lifts that far.

 

Your thread has brought up painful memories for me..... I feel your pain. I had a heck of a time gettin' mine back in. Hope things work out for ya!

 

How did you eventually do it?

Alright, I spent an hour and a half trying to get the spring to slide in with the pry bar, no go. I can't get the spring to compress to get that last bit of coil to pop in. I did have another thought though. Especially after seeing that I would have to knock down the side of the garage to get the other side in as the front of the car shifted towards that side a while back. Theres no room on that side to lever in a spring.

Anyway, heres what I had in mind. What if I bought a spring compressor, and cut down the threaded rod part so it was physically shorter? I'm sure I could go through harbor freight and get one dirt cheap for the sole purpose of doing this. I would have to weigh down the spring to get it compress as far as I need it to. Then it should pop in make the pivot, and I can undo the hooks after I put a jack under it and hook up the sway bar.

 

Ironically, I think that junk one was the one I used when I got the original ones out a year or so ago......I've been wonderinig if it might work again. Doubt it as I bet that rod is way too long.

 

you guys are making this way too hard.

but the ball joint back in and pull the control arm pivot bolts, you can drop the spring pocket down farther that way. Put the spring in (unless you've got something messed up or it's a very tall spring you should be able to set it in there like this), put the jack under the spring pocket and jack it up. If its a very stiff spring you might need to put a jack under the opposite rear corner of the car to shift more weight over this corner if it starts lifting when you try to jack into the pocket.

Once you jack it back into position you might need a big pry bar, a second jack or just something like a screwdriver in the pivot bolt hole to get things to line up exactly, but it can be done, I've done this multiple times with just one person, I've installed factory WS6 springs, cut ws6 springs, moogs, eibach pros and GW specific rate (900#) springs this way. The cut WS6 (with a thick spring isolator to raise the front end up a little) and the GW springs were the only ones that were a hassle and they went in w a jack under the back corner of the car.

 

I would try that if I had spindles and struts on the car. I do not.

 

How are you planning on finishing putting it together without spindles and struts?

 

I'm working on that part. You're saying you need to have the spindles and struts to put springs on the car? I've seen more than enough pics of the springs in cars without the struts or anything hooked up. I'm rebuilding this car lil by lil. The Spindles are out to Scott at big brake upgrade dot com to see if he can use them for modding for LS1 brakes. As for the struts, well since I'm going konis I'm not gonna have them for a bit. I'm not trying to start anything I'm just wondering if it was essential to have the spindles and struts to put springs in cars. Naturally it will have everything it needs when done. I was gonna use the sway bar and links as a temporary hold up.

 

Put the strut in first and the A-Arm can't pivot any more. Am I right or wrong? If I remember correctly I am right!

 

You don't need them to install the springs, but you need them to keep the springs in acter they are installed. If you don't, technically the springs will .stay in, but you run the risk of a spring coming out unexpectadly and possibly hurt somebody.

Out of curiosity is the engine in the car?

 

I was stupid! After replacing the control arm bushings, Struts, ball joints, end link bolts, control arm center bushings. Thought it was a good time to drop the Bird and cut the springs (In my defense, this forum told me it was ok to cut/reinstall the dropped springs)Long story short: Don't cut your springs and don't believe everything people say. I was foolish and learned my leason! I also tethered them with my sons bike chain/lock so if they went flyin' it wouldn't be far!

 

um no but I know it will be much easier with 500+ more lbs of weight up front. Trans is in though, the weight is in the wrong place. From what people are saying it sounds like if I want a roller without the engine I'll need the spindles and struts. To say the least. I didn't want to build the engine and then find out we had to move the car and not be able to move it. Hence rolling chassis first.

 

That clears up why you are having trouble. Without the added weight of the engine, it will be very hard to install springs. That said, to install the spring, you really need the spindles and struts, they don't have to be the finished complete parts, just to be there to hold things together

 

Ok. I'll hold off til I at least get the mounts and spindles done. I still have the old busted Monroe struts I can use as a placeholder til I get the konis. As much as I would want to build the motor, I want to be able to move it out of the garage if we need to move it.

 

What on earth are you talking about? Cut springs are no different from regular springs, just stiffer rate and a half coil shorter. I along with tons of other people have been putting cut springs into cars for years with no issues.

Edit: Nevermind, I saw in your other thread. You cut a full coil off which is twice as much as the norm. I never recommend cutting more than half a coil. If you want more than a 1 inch drop then you need lowering springs in my opinion and that's always been my recommendation, but if you need an inch or less I think it's silly to waste money on lowering springs when you can just trim a half coil off your factory springs to get the same look and half a coil will increase the spring rate, but good shocks and struts will keep the ride comfortable. You want a stiffer rate with shorter springs anyway just because of the decreased distance from the A-arm to the bump stops, plus you want a sportier spring rate if you're lowering the car in most cases. If you want a slammed car and a stock-ish ride, the Eibach Sportlines are good for that. They're not so good for performance, but great for looks and cruising.

 

L695speed- I saw your posts on NJfboa.... if you need help please shoot me a PM. Im about 45 minutes away from you. I *think* I can help you get the springs installed. I never installed a set of front springs with a motor out of a car but.... first time for everything.

Dan

 

You need a decent coil spring compressor like one from OTC. The OTC compressor uses plates and a thrust bearing. I just about fully compressed my front springs with it, no air tools, just a wrench. Very little effort to turn the nut to compress the spring. I was done with both sides in less than 45 minutes.

 

Finally found this thread again. I'm giving it another go, this time with a complete suspension on the car except for springs. I definitely need a Spring compressor, no way around it without the motor in the car or a sumo wrestler on the fender. The car is on the ground now so I don't have to worry about it falling off jackstands. I will see if I can find that OTC compressor. Considering the lack of an air impact I'm gonna have to compress it the hard way. Hopefully better luck this time. This will sound crazy but hear me out here. What if...I pulled out the original block from under the bench and quickly dropped it in the car for more weight, would just the block and cam be enough weight or would I need more? Doubt I will do that way if I find a decent compressor.

 

Which spring compressor model was it? Do you recall? At 200+ bucks for one I don't think it would be worth it if I bought it just for this build. If I knew for sure I would be building more cars after this (likely may) then I might consider it.

 

I think you need to perfect the crowbar method. You need to put the end of the crowbar on the top of the spring pocket. It seems a little slippery there, so just hold it in place with your feet on either side. Slide the spring down the bar into the spring pocket - done deal. If you're trying to anchor the crowbar into the hole in the center of the spring pocket, it can be done that way but it's much harder. Put the end of it right between the two marker holes that mark where the end of the coil needs to be indexed. I doubt I had to put more than 30 or 40 lbs of force into the bar, easy peasy. As the spring slides down it, it gets even easier. The advantage of putting it into the spring indexing area is that if you can only manage to get the crowbar just barely horizontal, that's all you need.

If you can get a spring compressor to work, then by all means do it that way, but I couldn't get it to compress enough or be removable after installation, it seems that in order to make it possible to compress it enough to install it, it was impossible to get it back out.

Is the car itself actually lifting when you try to compress the spring with the crowbar?

Whenever I get lowering springs I'm gonna take some pictures, maybe a movie of this, so you guys can figure it out easier.

 

I am trying the internal 4 hook compressor with a 4.5 inch pipe and its being a real bitch to get it to compress evenly. I know of a compressor that will probably do it easily with no problem but it costs 200 bucks. I think you can do it with a compressor, but it has to be setup just right and compressed quite a bit to get it to work.

Infernal, yes the whole car is lifting with the jack and spring in there. I even tried compressing it further in the car but its hitting the crossmember. And that is with a 4.5 inch pipe. I am tempted to try another method using the claw compressor from autozone, put the claw on the bottom of the a arm, hooks up high. I never had much luck, I can never seem to get springs to compress without a compressor or a motor in there. I am trying this via dropping the A arm, pivoting at the ball joint.

 

my offer still stands.... I think you might wanna drop the engine in the car and put a couple bolts in. Even if its just a bare block I'd get a friend to sit on top of the engine for weight. (Desperate times call for desperate measures).

 

I may just drop the L69 bare block with the cam and a couple other items in the block, and intake, carb whatever else I can think of to add weight to the front and try again. No rotating assembly and no heads. But it should add at least 200 lbs to the front end for compression. Hell I could probably load up on top of that with various parts to add weight. I would prefer not to ask people to sit on the car because of the chance that someone might get hurt. I have the time to mess with the block so maybe I'll do just that. I will also try the pry bar trick again, I got close the first time but I couldn't get the last coil in the arm.

 

dude, as soon as i saw a chain with a hook, i cringed.. i had a sudden vision of all of the ways that it could go terribly wrong and all the bones that could be broken...

phwew...

 

That is why I am so weary of the whole idea of using a pry bar to get these things in.... But as I said in the NJFBOA threads, people build bare chassis with no bodies and no motor and the somehow are able to compress springs to install them, I know about the suspension differences, but still you're compressing a front coil spring to get them in. Maybe I will try the claw varient and use the a arm as the bottom for the claw, and put the hooks up high. I got the old tall springs out using that compressor, no reason why I couldn't get the new ones in using it.

 

someone showed pics of the spring compressors, you can probably rent them from your local parts store.... or buy and return them if money is an issue. piece of mind, vs loss of limb.. lol

i have a set of them sitting here, too bad you're not local

-- with that said you may have addressed the reason you aren't using them and i may have missed it...

 

The crowbar method will never work if the car isnt heavy enough to compress the spring... do what thou wilt!

The only time it's dangerous is when you are getting close to having the ball joints/strut knuckles bolted in. At teh point where you're just installing the spring there's VERY little stored kinetic energy in the springs. As they get compressed into the car by the A-arm as you jack it up, the amount of stored energy gets VERY, VERY high, that's when I like to chain it up, just in case the jack fails or slides out from under the a-arm somehow.

And I'm terrified of compressed springs, and that's a big part of the reason I really dislike spring compressors. Doing it the crowbar method is a lot safer in my opinion because you're not fussing around with a heavily compressed spring with hundreds of lbs of stored energy in it and trying to force it into tight places by hand. I had nothing but horrible visions of the claw arms sliding off the coils etc. Using the crowbar I had the spring fly out and hit me several times, it's harmless with that small amount of compression on it. The only danger being compressed that amount is simply the weight of the coil falling on your shoes. And again, with the crowbar, your feet are not under the spring, they're beside it. And I'd still much rather just slide the spring down the bar with my feet in some good work shoes than trying to manipulate a compressed spring in a finnicky compressor BY HAND into the spring pocket. The crowbar method keeps your hands safe.

I dont blame anyone for not wanting to do it that way simply because it's hard to explain well enough for people to get the hang of it, just gets frustrating, but safety reasons make no sense. Like I said, I probably spent 30 minutes trying to get it in the first time I did it, and I had to experiment with a bunch of different ways to do it, and I had the spring pop out and hit me over and over and over... It's really not that big of a deal when the store potential energy in it is only what your muscles and your lever can manage. It's not like the force of 2 tons of car on it (such as when it's installed) or a hydraulic jack (such as when you're compressing it into the car) or an impact wrench (such as when you're tightening it into a compressor).

Now granted im sure there's a way to hurt yourself with the crowbar method, so I would suggest some good sturdy work boots/shoes just because, but woudln't you rather have a barely compressed spring bouncing off the soles of your shoes than handle a 2+ inch compressed one with your fingers? I was terrified of that spring compressor, especially with how much I had to mess with it to try to make it work. That's why I did it the way I did.


Anyway, if you really want to try something different, get your balljoints and struts connected and then remove your A-arm bushing bolts and lower the k-member side of the A-arm. Seat the spring into the upper spring perch and swing the a arm up underneath it. Then all you have to do is jack on the areas of the a-arm near the bushing. This method is tricky, though, because you have to get the jack in a good spot where it has enough leverage on the spring to jack the a-arm up without jacking up the car. I had issues with it raising the car with my engine in it, but if you're frustrated it may be something you might want to try. I WAS able to get that to work, but the crowbar method was much easier.

I used a bar that was pretty flat across it's length. If you've got one with an exagerrated curve, that will mean the spring is way too compressed probably. This is where I put the end of the bar:



When you get the end of the bar hooked on the top side of the spring pocket there, you should barely have to compress the spring at all to get the bottom coil of the spring physically higher than the "lip" on the center of the spring pocket. It shouldn't take a lot of force at all to hold the spring there. From there if you compress it more it will make it easier to slide, or you can keep it level and keep it less compressed. Your call, but all you're trying to do is get the inside coil of the spring over that lip. Just shove that thing down there with your boots.

The bar I used was pretty similar to this:

http://www.harborfreight.com/hand-to...bar-92590.html

Put the hook down into the spring pocket. It's not easy to hold it there, and thats pretty much the only frustrating part of this method. I've made it work by putting the hook into the hole in the center of the A-arm, but that requires a lot more brute strength and forcing square pegs into round holes. It requires you to WAY over compress teh spring to get the inside of the bottom coil over the lip of the spring pocket. The geometry just doesnt make sense. You have to have the bar at a HELL of an angle and WAY over compress the spring to make that work. Hooking the crowbar on the spring pocket itself requires a lot less force, and a lot less compression on the spring. It's just a lot easier, makes it more of a finesse job than anything.

And in case you haven't figured it out already, just tape the spring isolators to the top coil of your spring. No sense in trying to hold those in place while you're trying to do everything else.

 

Its impossible to get them in without weight in the car even with a compressor. I even tried compressing them on the A arm and installing the whole unit, it simply can't be done. I'm gonna quit til I either get a bunch of people into the engine bay, get a motor of some kind in there to weigh down the front end, something, I do know its too low as it is with just the bump stops to legitimately roll it wherever I want or even put a motor in. I would have to keep the oil pan off if I put a completed motor in til I got the springs in. The whole front clip is disassembled too but the motor is the key I think. How do the Fox body guys do it? I think they have the same problem.

 

I didnt even think about that, even if you could get the spring into the pocket, you've still got to compress it with the a-arm. i think your only solution is a spring compressor. You have to get the spring short enough to get it in the car and bolt everything up before you can let it loose.

 

Ok I measured. A pro kit front spring is 12.5 inches. In order to make it slip in without being a royal pain it would need to be at least 10 inches probably shorter, compressed. Is such a feat even possible with a compressor? I think it may be. But the spring would need to be compressed all the way with the rod not interfering with the K member. Does anyone know if it is possible to compress a spring that far and just slip it in?

 

red flag.

what rod is near the k-member? there should be no such thing. IIRC the lower part of the compressor with the hex and the pipe nipple will be sticking out the bottom of the a-arm, not the other way. sound like you have no pipe nipple, or not a long enough one?

 

Sorry, I should have been more clear, I meant the screw rod on the compressor. Ofc there is no rod in the K member, With this particular compressor a 4 inch pipe is too long, the compressor screw won't reach the hooks. A 3.5 inch one might work but I will have to go get one tomorrow to find out. Can a Pro kit front be compressed that far in the first place? At about 9 inches it should pop in with no fight from anything. My problem is I can just see the hell that can be unleashed if this goes wrong, I think that would be a fully compressed spring that tight.

 

they can be compressed all the way to coil bind, which is a LOT. however, doing that by hand without the aid of a compressor and air tools will be almost impossible, and the load might be enough to cause the compressor to fail.