Installing Front Coil Springs
In this article I removed the front coil springs. Everything I said in that article holds, even more so for installing the springs. Yes, anything having to do with jacking up the car is dangerous. I can build a concrete pad with rebar that is 6 inches thick (see this article for details), and use strong jack stands to combat the dangers of jacking up the car. I can be very careful about removing the engine, another very dangerous task (see this article). One thing, though, that I can't say I'm happy about safety-wise, is dealing with the front coil springs. The best I could come up with was to use the included eyes in the coil spring brackets and the hooks from two different sets of coil spring compressors. I had to extend the tool by using two pieces of two foot threaded 5/8 inch rod. I used the retainers from both sets of compressors to keep the coil in place. Here are some pictures of the tool and the compressed coil:
The tool from AMC that is used for this is useless to reinstall the springs. Not like I have the tool anyway. The tool merely helps in removing the springs by jacking up the opposite corner and securing the spring with the brackets. There has to be a better way to install these than what I did, but I got by, and the springs are in. I will research this some more next time I try this. Think about it. If you take a spring and compress it between your fingers, it may very well shoot off. Now, a front coil spring supports the weight of the vehicle, or, at least, its share, so just imagine what kind of damage that spring can cause. I can just imagine the makeshift devices that people make to compress front coil springs, and visions of bailing wire taking out eyes dance in my head. This is simply a horrible task. I got through it without mishap, but I spent almost twelve hours total experimenting with different methods and backing out when it wasn't quite right. Enough on that. Here is where the spring fits, on the top of the upper trunnion:
Here is the spring in place, ready to be loosened:
I greased the 5/8" threaded rod with bearing grease so that the spring retainers and hooks would slide easily along the rod. One thing that I didn't realize, but I suppose it makes sense, is that the coils get larger when they are compressed. This means that you have to constantly tighten the retaining hooks as you compress the coil.
One of the coils needed a third compressor, hooked around the ends of the coils, to keep it from bending outward. This one turned out not to need it, though.
I do encourage you to read this site's terms of use.
Cheers.
--Agatha
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