Ah look, I'm just a backyard guy so this issn't so much a tutorial as a bunch of pictures of my D2 pulled to bits and some vague narrative of what I was doing- Cos I know how much we all like to see that kind of stuff....

Pics taken with my phone which I will never do again...

So anyway the best way to start is loosen the wheel nuts a bit, and grab some really heavy duty axle stands, we don't want to get pinned under this baby. Jack the chasssis up as high as you can....



So then use two bottle jacks to lift the axle up on both sides rip off the wheels. Time now to have a good old look under there because what you want to do is have those coil springs drop down as far as possible.

That means shockies, brake lines and ABS lines need to go, be careful, fragile....



I chose to disconnect the ABS at the chassis side.... and slung the brake calliper up under the chassis ...

And in my case ACE actuator thingy.....



And that arm thing that stops the axle wobbling sideways.



So when you are happy with your with disconnecting - you can slowly let your bottle jacks down until the coil springs pop out enough to remove them. They are attached at the bottom by a couple of bolts.

If it looks different to this you're either driving a Japanese car or you're doin it wrong.....



So then stick the rubber blocks into the coil spring - taking a moment to decide how you will run your air lines. It's not shown but I took mine out and towards the back. I attached the air lines while the rubber block was a small distance off the air bag. Fitting the air bags themselves is fiddly but well worth getting right. I found if you put a bitt of a twist into them it made it easier to insert them remove the twist.



Then reattach the bottom end of the spring. I then ran my airlines and attached the valves to do a test inflation before I put everything back.

All A- OK so in it all went.



And I like them. I will need heavier springs when it comes time to replace suspension because I have a 165 litre OOT Long range tank and an LPG tank in the boot which all up I think would weight close to 100kg. Which made the original OME springs peak with no load on them.

I took care to position the valves in a good spot.....



And when I bought 300kg of soil in bags yesterday you would hardly have known there was anything in there....

Cheers and now you can go back to Bundalenes really cool defender rebuilds.


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