Decided to do a little more work on the suspension today. Firstly, the pillowball tops were looking a little second hand...and the coilovers would make an annoying noise when you applied lock, which I'll explain in a moment.
So up she goes on stands.
For what I''ll be doing, the strut legs will come off, but first the caliper is unbolted and wired up to the side.
When I turn the wheel to apply a lot of lock (say when parking), you can hear this ka-ting, ka-ting noise. Basically what happens is that as the bottom part of the strut turns, rotational force is applied to the top spring hat (and hence the pillowball top) via the spring. So the spring binds a bit, then releases, and that's that ka-ting noise. It's very annoying and you can feel it as a slight notchiness in the steering. G4's fix for it, is to install a rubber isolator at the top and bottom of the spring, but in my case, as the original shocks died, oil leaked out and ate away the rubber which fell to pieces.
And when I installed the new shocks a few weeks ago, I forgot to get new rubber isolators, and installed the springs without them. Anyway, this made the ka-ting, ka-ting much worse and as of today I couldn't stand it and went to see Frank at K-Sport. His solution is a bit different to G4's, which is instead of using rubber to give the spring grip, he installs a combination of steel and hard plastic spacers, which are greased up before assembly.
One goes at the top, and another at the bottom of the spring.
Ready for installation...I like to set up the spring height with no preload, which is to say that the spring, when installed is just very lightly trapped in place (the actual ride height is set by screwing the whole schock up and down in the bottom blue mount). I find this gets the best ride, without a "tense" quality that you usually get with coilovers.
Before installation...the new K-Sport vs the old G4 pillowball top. The K-Sport one is much bigger, so you use a thicker tubular spacer (pictured) when installing the shock. I didn't think there was anything wrong with the old G4 pillowballs, but when I compared them to the new ones, they do seem a little worn. The new ones are very stiff, to the point where you can't move the ball by hand, whereas the old G4s move quite smoothly by hand and maybe have a tiny bit of slop. Anyway they are 6yr old, so have had a good innings.
Installed and ready to go!
Well the minor suspension makeover has worked like a charm, the steering is silky smooth and silent from lock to lock now. Frank suggested that once a year, say during an oil change, it's a good idea to loosen the springs and paint some new grease between washers. But the front end is super tight feeling, I reckon it's pretty sorted now.
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Originally Posted by bahaimus
Oh well, live and learn. The next thing I want to try is some chrome foil that sticks on like gold leaf.
