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How to: Road Magnet spring install

12K views 14 replies 11 participants last post by  sturner517 
#1 · (Edited)
Subject: Road Magnet Aggressive Spring install
Estimated time: 5-8 hours depending on skill level
Estimated difficulty: medium+
Disclaimer: Wear proper safety equipment (at a minimum cover you frickin eyes). I take no responsibility if your hurt yourself / damage your truck / decide to give up half way and burn your truck to the ground

Things to know/think about before getting started:
-I did the bwoody endlinks and rear control arms at the same time. This is covered in a different really good how to thread.
-You'll have to take the front calipers off, so if you're still running the stock pads I'd recommend changing them while you're at it with a lower dusting option.
-Doing this job without air tools would be very difficult and I would not recommend
-You'll need a set of good metric impact wrenches, plus a 21mm short impact, a upper a-arm puller (looks like a u with a big bolt going through it) and a 3/4" impact socket, as well as 5/16" hex (iirc) if installing the Bwoody rear control arms and end links
-The springs with less coils are the fronts, the springs with the series of compressed coils at the top are the rears. From post 16 in this thread:
http://www.***************/f172/road-magnet-aggressive-drop-quesiton-65534-2.html
"The rear springs physically are heavier and wound from a larger diameter wire, They weigh much more than the fronts. They also have more coils in them, with closer wound coils at the top of the spring.

The fronts are lighter with more evenly spaced coils. They are wound with a slightly smaller wire.

The new sets are all labeled F & R on the end of the coils now."

Procedure:
Front left (and right) -

Put on ebrake, jack up front of truck, chock rear wheels, put jack stands under the front of the car

Remove front wheels lugs and wheels
-Small tip: the wheels like to bind to the rotors. Put on a soft sole shoe (tennis shoes) and give it a bit of a mule kick around the outer part of the wheel in a couple spots

Now the fun starts.

Put jack under the lower a-arm MAKING SURE TO HAVE SOME PRESSURE UNDER THE A-ARM so you can adjust the suspension up and down


Now disconnect the sensor on the strut that runs to the body by pressing down on the tab at the back and using a flat head screw driver to push it towards the back of the truck


Next you'll need to disconnect the following bolts in this order:
1. Remove the two pins, metal retainer, and carriage bolt holding the brake pads in place. The carriage bolt slides out easier if you put a little lubricant on it. Then slide the brake pads out, you may need to use a flat head screw driver to get them started.

2. Remove the two large bolts that hold the caliper to the spindle. Impact gun made quick work of this. Set caliper on a box that gives you a bit of room to work but wont bind the hoses up, no need to disconnect the lines though.

3. Remove lower end link bolt. The nut is on the lower a-arm, on the side that's towards the rear of the car, you can see it in the pic above to the right of the strut bolt. Again, impact gun. Move the jack up and down a little and wiggle out the stud.

4. Remove bolt holding steering tie rod to the spindle. Again I dont know why I didnt take a picture of this, but its just infront of the end-link. You can try to remove the stud from the spindle now, if it comes out easily then go for it, but dont force it. It may be easier to remove at a later step.

5. Remove the bolt holding the strut to the spindle. I believe this is 21 mm on the nut, 24 mm on the bolt. In this pic you can see the bolt for the strut, which the impact is on, and the end link disconnected in step 3. Again you'll be able to push this bolt out by GENTLY tapping on it and moving the jack up an down until you find the sweet spot where it comes out easily.


6. Remove bolt holding the spindle to the upper a-arm. A deep socket was too long for this, I had to use the shallow 21mm. Then using the tool described above (the U with the bolt in it), pop the spindle out of the upper a-arm.
NOTE: The spindle will pop out a little violently, be prepared, nothing should come flying off unless something is really wrong.


7. At this point you the spindle will be easily movable. Finally go ahead and remove the tie rod stud from the spindle if you have not ready. If you have to use a bit of force, make sure you hit the tie rod itself, dont put the nut on the thread and hit that or you'll be giving your friendly dealer $126 for a new outer tie rod when you cant get the nut back on. Everything is disconnected from the lower part of the jeep.

8. Remove the three bolts that hold the strut to the fender from the engine bay (13mm iirc).


When you disconnect the last bolt in the previous step, the strut will drop but it wont go very far.

The next step is the fun one. I would have taken a pic for you but I was out of hands and my wife wouldnt get close to me because I was swearing and sweating profusely at this point.

Grab the strut and position yourself to where your knees are on top of the caliper. Lean your weight on the caliper to force it down as low as humanly possible while trying to lift the strut up and over the dust boot on the axle. This was the hardest part of the whole thing. Just keep trying and it'll come out.

This is what you'll be looking at now:


Take a note of the position of the top of the strut compared to the bottom. This will make it easier to re-install if you're close.

I didnt use a spring compressor for the next step. I dont know if you're supposed to, but I didnt need it.

Use a 18mm (iirc) socket and the air ratchet and remove the bolt that holds the upper mount, dust boot and bumpstop. It will come off slowly, but watch out again because this spring is under pressure and I guess if you were really doing it wrong it could fly off and hurt you.

If you're doing the RM springs, you'll need to trim the bump stop. Take it off and cut 1/2" to 3/4" off per the instructions. I used a sawzall and it was pretty quick. Wear eye protection as always.




Put the bump stop back on, reattach the dustboot to the upper mount. Place the front spring on the strut in the indent where the stock spring was. Slide the upper mount/dustboot/bumpstop over the shock. You should be able to get 3 threads of the nut back on the strut. Put your impact on the fastest setting and put the nut back on. I didnt have to hold the strut shaft at all.

You should have this now:


In the old car cliche, put it back in the opposite way you put it in. Double check all bolts to make sure they are tight. I dont know factory specs, I wish I did, I just make sure they were all obviously good and tightened down primarily with the impact.

Put your wheel back on and high five yourself. You're 25% done. Now's a good time to stop and drink a beer or hydrate yourself. Your call.

The right front is exactly the same. You dont need to do anything different. Sounds easy, right?

The good thing is that the rear is like 3217983207141263985719827423 times easier.

Rear left:
Jack up rear, put on jackstands, chock front wheels, take rear wheel off, support rear spindle with the jack. Here's what you'll be looking at:


Make note of how the spring sits. The bottom perch has a plastic piece that will spin so you can line up the new spring nicely.

Now do the following:
1. Disconnect the bolt near the caliper from control arm that you can see in the middle of the pic above. iirc its 18mm on both the bolt and the nut. You may need to use the jack to move the spindle up and down to get the bolt out.

2. Disconnect the lower end link bolt similar to what you did on the front.

NOTE: Make sure to have proper support on the spindle at this point
3. Disconnect the bolt at the bottom of the shock. Again move the jack up and down to get the bolt out.

THE SAME NOTE: at this point, the rear spring is ready to come out. Once you get the bolt out from the bottom of the shock, SLOWLY lower down the jack. You'll see the spring come lose from the upper mount as such:


Take the rubber top off the stock spring, and place it on the new spring. It will easily slide back into place. Use the jack to guide it up a little so that you can slide the bolts back in place. Again be careful, the spring will be under a bit of pressure.

Put the shock, endlink, and control arm bolts back in place and tighten everything up. Put your wheel back on.

Heres what it looks like. I dont care if you dont care, it took me a long time and I'm proud of it:


Pass side is exactly the same.

Now you're done. Drive directly to the alignment shop, your alignment will be way out of whack and if you like your tires, or dislike spending $1100 on new tires, do this.

Drive home and drink another beer.

Thanks
Chuck
 
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#3 ·
#6 ·
Great write-up as I just did this over the weekend....
As an option and a bit more work, but removing the spindle and the halfshaft makes it a heck of a lot easier to remove the strut.
**If you do this, you will need a new hub nut and coated washer, less than $20 retail at the dealer.**
The hub nut does need to be torqued to 229 ft.lbs. Having someone press on the brake while torquing this nut down is sufficient.
 
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#10 ·
Did you undo the ball joint?
 
#15 ·
Old thread but extremely useful.

FYI - front springs you do not need to do steps 1 and 2 removing the brake pads caliper or bracket, all of that can stay bolted up.

+1 to the folks saying removing the half shaft nut to give you more room to remove the struts on the front. I did not, but it was a bear pushing down the whole arm assembly enough to clear the bottom part of the strut to get past the half shaft. Again, doable but you will break a sweat.
 
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