Two Guys Rally

The Volvo Chronicles: Parts Installed
[ September 17th, 2008 ] By: Mark Ozimek Posted in » Ramblings

Unfortunately, it was raining over the weekend, so I had to delay the suspension work I had planned for the car. It was a really nice day yesterday, so I took the day off to have a full day in case something went horribly awry and I needed to go get more parts (I did, hahaha).

Unfortunately Charles had class for most of the day, so he wasn’t able to help me. No worries, as my tool selection really only allows one person to be working at a time, he would have just been sitting there and watching me and taking pictures.

One piece of advice, make sure you have all of the tools you need before you start. I thought I did, but it turns out that the jack stands were with Charles, and the spring compressors I was using for the struts required a 15/16th inch wrench, which I didn’t have, and required an emergency trip to Sears to get it.

Everything went more or less smoothly. I wasted some time on a few silly mishaps, like forgetting to put the dust boot on the first strut until I had decompressed the spring and had the strut assembly all together. This required taking the whole thing apart and getting the whole strut assembly into pieces so that I could get the spring seat out again to put the dust cap underneath it. Not a big deal, but annoying.

Before and after shots, since the springs I used lower the car about an inch to an inch and a half.

(click for larger)

And some pictures my lovely assistant, Sarah, took when she stopped by to see how things were coming along.

So now I get to play around with the shocks, since the rebound damping is adjustable, meaning the amount of resistance to the expansion of the shocks. This should have some interesting implications on the way the car handles, but I want to get used to how it feels now, since the difference is huge compared to the wallowy stock setup. I’m sure I’ll collect some data in true engineering fashion and post my findings from changing the suspension settings.