DA Lowering Spring Install on an EF�� By Ben Ogle


Warning: By choosing to decompress the springs without a spring compressor you are putting yourself in danger. I am not at all responsible if you hurt yourself decompressing the springs.

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The other day my buddy Chris picked up a set of DA neuspeed race springs for $60 locally and asked me if they would fit. I was positive that they would physically bolt up but wasn't sure how the car would sit/look. So we thought "what the fuck? Lets try it," and since we were trying it I figured I would write a How-To-install-lowering-springs article. Yep, its a how-to, not just a "will this work?" article.

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Installing springs is really easy. I mean it. It doesn't really take any mechanical skill and is a great project to start out on. It isn't all that involved and you cant really screw it up. It took us around 45 minutes. There were 3 of us but I was only taking pictures (that makes 2 workers and me as a "supervisor") and we did one corner at a time. It could be a 1 person job but is nicer to do with at least 2 folks.

What you need:
A car
Some lowering springs or coilovers
Possibly some shocks

Deepwell 14mm socket
Deepwell 12mm socket
17mm socket
17mm end wrench
Ratchet (however the hell you spell that) that fits the above sockets
19mm 1/2" drive socket
Deepwell 14mm 1/2" drive socket
Impact wrench (optional)

First of all do the obvious: Jack up whichever end of the car you want to do first and take off the wheels with your 19mm socket and impact wrench. Whew, hard stuff, eh?
If you are doing the front first then you have to take the lower fork off the shock, unbolt the brake lines, and unbolt the shock from the chassis. To unbolt the fork take out (all the way out) the bolt that clamps it to the shock with your deepwell 14mm. Then go after the bolt that holds the fork to the lower control arm (LCA). It has a 17mm head and a nut on the other end (17mm socket and end wrench come in hand here). Then you just drop the fork down onto the LCA (well, axle) and that is out of the way enough for us. Heres how it looks with the fork dropped down:
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To unbolt the brake lines you bust out the 12mm and go to town. When done it looks like this:
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To unbolt the shock from the chassis you simply take off the 2 14mm nuts on the top of the hat that are inside the engine bay. Look:
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Then the Shock pretty much drops right out. When you have the assembly out you usually have to take the stock spring off the shock. If you have new shocks in addition to springs you can probably get some stock top hats from a junk yard so you dont have to screw with "decompressing" the stock spring. If you are going to use your stock top hats then you have to decompress the spring because it is preloaded on the factory shock. Fortunately they aren't preloaded very much so it is possible to take them off very easily. What we do is just zip the top nut off with the rattle gun. Its quick and easy. We also try and point the shit away from people because no matter how little it may be, the springs are still preloaded. Rich and chris at work:
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Once the spring is off you gotta put the new spring on. The springs we put on didn't need to be compressed to get the nut on so we were lucky. If yours have to be compressed then you have to either go to a shop to get them to do it or buy a spring compressor that fits. Anyway, ours didn't need any preload so we just zipped the nut back on. Easy as pie:
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Now you put the shock/spring combo back in in the reverse order that you removed it.

For the rear you have to take off the bottom LCA bolt, take off the top hat nuts and if you want to save some trouble, take the UCA to trailing arm bolt out.

Take this 14mm bolt out:
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Then take off these 14mm nuts:
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Then, if you actually want to get the shock out, take off this 14mm bolt:
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When you have the shock out you have to take off the springs just like with the front assembly. The you have to put the new springs on, just like the front end. After you get the assembly back together you put it back on the car the opposite way you took it off. Easy, eh?

Now i suppose you want a pic of the car with the springs on. Yeah, well DA springs dont work well on the EFs. The front was fine but the rear was almost higher than it was stock. Crappy. I guess its time to either sell the springs or cut a few of the dead coils off.

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