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After finding the rear driver's side shock leaking, I ordered up the necessary replacement parts from eEuroparts. Started the job yesterday and finished up this morning. A few lessons/tips:
The only difficult part of this job is removing the nut at the top of the assembly. The nut and the shaft will be all corroded. On the first one, I used penetrating fluid and attempted to remove it using an offset wrench and vice grips to hold the shaft steady. This did not work. The shaft got torn up and actually sheared off. On to the destructive methods...
My Dremel is battery powered and quickly died while attempting to cut off the nut. I grabbed my neighbor's corded Dremel, but it was on the fritz. I then got desparate, but stumbled upon a pretty good Plan B. I used a cheap pocket knife to cut out the two rubber bushing/spacers. This allowed the shaft to be pushed an inch or so up out of the assembly, where I could cut it off with a hacksaw below the nut - didn't need to bother with the nut at all. eEuro supplies new bushings with the shock so this method is ok.
On the second shock, I cleaned off the nut and shaft with a wire wheel on my drill ($4 well spent), sprayed some liquid wrench on it, and it came off with little difficulty using the offset wrench and vice grip. Much better solution :)
Reassembly was pretty easy. Torquing the lower bolt to 140 ft-lbs is a bit tricky. With the wrench pointing to the rear, on the passenger side you're pushing it down. I'm 185 lbs and had to give it my all to get the click. On the driver's side, you're pushing up and I was unable to do it on my own. I got my floor jack out and used it to push the handle up. This worked pretty well.
Had I avoided the problem with the nut on the first shock like I did with the second, I'd call this a quite easy job. I probably spent a total of 4 hours, and I'd never done it before. I think I spent about $260 for the OEM parts.
jeff
posted by 71.178.117...
, Sun, 18 Oct 2009 08:53:26
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