I was chuffed how quickly the rear coilovers had gone on, now to the front struts. I knew I had to get a ball joint seperator (I went the fork route - bad idea!) and spring compressors.
Now the fronts are a nightmare and straight away the reason why is because of the ball joints at the bottom of the struts. I went to Halfords for a fork type splitter, and wish I'd researched this art a bit more, of which there's plenty of generic ball joint splitting advice on t'nterweb. Mind you everyone seems to know what the best method is and they are often different!
What's certainly true is fork type splitters are good at knackering your ball joint rubber and seals. This side is bad enough but the passenger side ended up utterly mullered, and probably not a lot of grease is left in the wishbone joint...So I'll be getting new tie rod ends and control arms at some stage, and having seeen what they do I'd like the peace of mind anyway. The joints are very wobbly anyway, and that shows years of wear. They should be quite stiff.
Got the strut off, old vs new. The spring compressors are a pain in the arse to set up right as the threaded bar is long and simply chews into the underseal in the wheel arch! Hnece they aren't exactly on opposite sides as they should be, so I only compressed them enough to take the spring load and a bit more.
This was how it was shaping up putting the new Gaz dampers on - very nicely indeed. On the other side I spent a lot of time trying to get the control arm joint of the strut and like I said, destroyed my rubbers in the process. Enlightenment came when my neighbour Will turned up with a scissor type seperator. You keep turning a bolt and it pushes the ball joint bolt down levering against the bottom of the arm. The seperation took seconds, and marked it's fanfare with a very satisfying metalic bang. So my advice in the sea of ball joint advice is very simple: you need one of these tools in your life!
The next problem was the top mount nuts:
I've just noticed how messy the bay is and my cheap electrical tape does not cover the battery terminals - something to do with me needing to take them off to give the car a jump start! I'm already wondering if I can fashion some sort of easy access positive terminal in my B&Q junction box behind it's screwed in waterproof cover. But anyway, I digest.... (FG)
Firstly I slightly reamed out the three mouting holes as the top mount wouldn't line up. I probably should have gone for a bit more inward negative camber here but I measured the reaming out to the top mount holes that looked like they'd been used by the previous E30 race car. I'll probably adjust and on the next available fitting holes the mount will bring the top more rear giving a bit more castor. But that wasn't my biggest worry. As I've seen on various searches, many people have issues tightening the top mount main nut on coilovers, and I was no exception.
After realising that I could keep the strut from turning with an allen key, and turn the nut with a 25 mil ring swan necked spanner (which I couldn't find locally for love nor money!), another E30 zone member popped up with a better solution - an impact driver. I'd already tightened as much as possible using mole grips on the top part of the shaft which wouldn't travel past the damper seals, but the passenger side could not be tightened very well. Unsuprisingly, on the test drive I'd get a knock noise rom that strut going over bumps, reminding me of my early days in my MK3 Golf. When we tried the impact driver method it became apparent that the circular shoulder of the nut was grinding in the spherical bearing stopping it from easily going in. A bit of "surgery" on the nut, and she was in tightly - huge relief. However, I didn't even get chance to start my drive slowly on the back roads back, because it was instantly obvious the front was now ready to play ball. And that's the first time it really hit me how much of an improvement all 4 corners were - even on my badly set up "stilts" suspension setting and slightly wonky tracking!
Fun doesn't even come close to describing the car now after all this messing with rear beams bushes, a dog's dangly bits roll cage stiffening the car, powerflex control arm bushes and finally Gaz coilovers. It's instant connection with the road - even a snowy / wet pot holed ridden one! I utterly loved the drive back, and can't wait to round off the edges of my bodged set up to a decent aligned lowered spec.