PXHero
15+ Year Contributor
- 166
- 10
- Aug 19, 2008
-
Columbus,
Ohio
After almost a year and a half of having my beautiful 1999 Barcelona Red (purple) GSX I finally got around to some mods.
I started with a Megan Short Shifter and a Symborski bushings kit. Except for breaking a bolt
on the shifter plate the install went smoothly, luckly I managed to extract the broken portion and replace it with a machine screw of the same size and thread
, maybe I'll replace it with a factory bolt down the line
.
My next step was to lower the car with the Megan 2" drop springs. This proved to be a bit of a hassle. The rears went smoothly, and I replaced the shocks since I could compress them by hand and they wouldn't push back out. While I was buying shocks, I also bought fronts as well, figuring they were probably bad too (and they were). I got the rears done and lowered in a little less than an hour. The fronts took me close to nine hours (of actual work) due to the siezed bolts in lateral control arm bushings. Thankfully I have access to a shop with a sizeable air compressor, die grinder, and plentiful cutting wheels. Over the course of the next four days I purchased new lateral control arms, pivot bolts twice (once having purchased from Lowes SAE bolts that were a hair to thick), shock fork retaining bolts, lock washers and nuts, and managed to lower one of the fronts. When I finally got around to lowering the other side I was soooooo proud of myself, and very satisfied with my work
.
I've had the car lowered for three days now, and just last night I encountered a problem. While driving home I lost all steering, the front driver suspension just collapsed
, and a horrible grinding noise emminated from my wheel
. Come to find out that the ball joint nut on my freshly replaced lateral control arm hadn't been tightened properly. The nut, now missing, had worked it's way off and the ball joint finally gave under the pressure. The sudden lack of support caused the axel joint at the wheel to bend past tolerance and at the very least shred the boot, I'm still waiting on the total damage report from the repair shop.
As for lessons learned:
1. The metal cup that holds the dust cover on the shock is actually important, don't throw it away. It acts as a washer for the bottom side of the bushing at the top of the shock, with it in place you won't see your shocks come into your cabin or through your hood.
2. Make sure to have a lot of penetrating oil, and actually use it. "PB Blaster" or "SeaFoam Deep Creep" work best from my experiences.
3. Be sure to lube the contact surfaces of the lateral control arm bushings and retaining bolts from time to time to avoid a lot of cutting and replacement costs.
4. Above all, when tightening a nut on a ball joint, make sure the nut is spinning, and not the joint.
I started with a Megan Short Shifter and a Symborski bushings kit. Except for breaking a bolt
on the shifter plate the install went smoothly, luckly I managed to extract the broken portion and replace it with a machine screw of the same size and thread, maybe I'll replace it with a factory bolt down the line.My next step was to lower the car with the Megan 2" drop springs. This proved to be a bit of a hassle. The rears went smoothly, and I replaced the shocks since I could compress them by hand and they wouldn't push back out
. While I was buying shocks, I also bought fronts as well, figuring they were probably bad too (and they were). I got the rears done and lowered in a little less than an hour. The fronts took me close to nine hours (of actual work) due to the siezed bolts in lateral control arm bushings. Thankfully I have access to a shop with a sizeable air compressor, die grinder, and plentiful cutting wheels. Over the course of the next four days I purchased new lateral control arms, pivot bolts twice (once having purchased from Lowes SAE bolts that were a hair to thick), shock fork retaining bolts, lock washers and nuts, and managed to lower one of the fronts. When I finally got around to lowering the other side I was soooooo proud of myself, and very satisfied with my work.I've had the car lowered for three days now, and just last night I encountered a problem. While driving home I lost all steering, the front driver suspension just collapsed
, and a horrible grinding noise emminated from my wheel. Come to find out that the ball joint nut on my freshly replaced lateral control arm hadn't been tightened properly. The nut, now missing, had worked it's way off and the ball joint finally gave under the pressure. The sudden lack of support caused the axel joint at the wheel to bend past tolerance and at the very least shred the boot, I'm still waiting on the total damage report from the repair shop.As for lessons learned:
1. The metal cup that holds the dust cover on the shock is actually important, don't throw it away
. It acts as a washer for the bottom side of the bushing at the top of the shock, with it in place you won't see your shocks come into your cabin or through your hood.2. Make sure to have a lot of penetrating oil, and actually use it. "PB Blaster" or "SeaFoam Deep Creep" work best from my experiences.
3. Be sure to lube the contact surfaces of the lateral control arm bushings and retaining bolts from time to time to avoid a lot of cutting and replacement costs.
4. Above all, when tightening a nut on a ball joint, make sure the nut is spinning, and not the joint
.
