Thread: Nose down

A set of stands would be an advantage. An hour or so before you start, spray all the fasteners with WD40 or similar. Take a before photo and measurements so you can post on here your "lookwhatididtoday" story

Take your time and have fun!

Originally Posted by Samblers

So I ended up buying Terrafirma springs, part TF018 (pair) – for future ref these are the same free length and spring rate (380mm/390mm free length; 230lb/in rate) as the genuine NRC9448/9449 springs and $140 less.

Going to do this myself - will I need a high lift jack?

I have a trolley jack, a scissor jack and the bottle jack that came with the car

Any other special tools req’d before I start?

I used a trolley jack and a high lift jack to do myne. You just have to be very careful with the high lift as they are an unstable device by design. Most of your time will be spent on the front as the rear is very simple. The worst is to undo the top of the front shocks, if you're going to chuck the old ones you can use a vice-grip on the shaft to stop them from turning.

Cheers, Jurgens.

Cheers guys, i'm only doing fronts

Originally Posted by Samblers

So I ended up buying Terrafirma springs, part TF018 (pair) – for future ref these are the same free length and spring rate (380mm/390mm free length; 230lb/in rate) as the genuine NRC9448/9449 springs and $140 less.

Sorry Samblers,, just making sure I've read you right.
The springs you've bought are equivalent to the 130's standard springs, and $140 less for the pair ?

By any chance did you look around for a second hand set,,, ie; a set that came out of a car which were replaced with 130 HD? (I hope that's understandable), probably obtainable from a suspension place.

Cheers Chops

Spring compressors

Originally Posted by Chops

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Sorry Samblers,, just making sure I've read you right.
The springs you've bought are equivalent to the 130's standard springs, and $140 less for the pair ?

Correct. LR want $150 each spring for NRC9448/9449 which are 376mm/389mm length, 225lb/in

Terrafirma are $160 for the pair – 380mm/390mm length, 230lb/in so identical within practical reason.

Terrafirma also list these as the 130 front springs and 90 rears, same as LR does so that’s good enough for me

Originally Posted by Aaron

Spring compressors

according to others in this thread, apparently not

Sam,

Without spring compressors you've got to "force" quite significant axle articulation to get the coils out. With the shocks removed you've got to get the coil to dislocate by lifting the other side high enough (or pressing your side down). The first one is usually easy as they sound like they've gotten quite "soft", but to do the second one you've got to make the new coil compress enough to dislocate the other one...

It's not too hard to do with jacks, but you've really got to have the chassis on stands before you try and do that.

Don't tell the Health and Safety blokes, but a small forklift has worked wonders in the past...

PS: Using an cutting torch on the old ones still made it a 20 minute job...

Cheers,

Lou