Surgery - part one

 So yesterday was the start of Barry's surgery, to replace all the shocks - and, spoiler, it went amazingly well.

We started on the fronts as they are much easier to do and did both sides in parallel. With a lift, car work is 100 times easier and we had the brakes off in minimal time. The drop links, because they were replaced less than a year ago, also came out very easily. One tie rod end popped out immediately while the other needed a ball joint splitter and the bolts on the top mount were easy to get out as they're in the frunk and don't get hit by the elements, so no corrosion.

Now, at this stage, the standard method is to loosen the lower coffin arm, to get more play on the hub so you can pull the top of the strut clear of the wheel arch. However, I wasn't keen on trying to get that nut loose - they're known to be difficult, so we just tried first without doing that. With Cearth hanging from the coffin arm underneath and me pulling the top of the strut, it eventually came out:

Some judicious use of a hammer and the whole strut came out of the hub:

It's not pretty in there and I would love to have time to replace all the brake lines, replace some bushes - another time.

The next stage was the scariest, building the new struts and using spring compressors for the first time - not fun after having seen videos of what happens if one of those let go. But it all went well - I'd printed out diagrams of how the struts fitted together and bought a full kit from Design911 that had every new part, so we didn't need to take the old one apart to salvage any bits.

We did have to reuse the clamps on the old strut legs (I thought that was in the kit but no) and one side came off easily, although the other side put up a fight and an angle grinder was needed.

The new struts went in easily enough and more hanging off coffin arms got them back under the wheel arch without removing any paint. Top mount nuts were simple, tightening to the marks we'd made around the old ones to keep the camber settings roughly right.

Tie rods, drop links and brakes all back in (after trimmin the lip on my disks a little - will need to change them soon) and all done - really not too bad; 5 hours all in, going slow.

We took the rear wheels off to think about doing the rears but decided discretion was the better part of valour and we'll do that in a couple of weeks time. The bottom of the rear drop links came apart nice and easily but there's a lot more stuff to do at the back and I didn't want to use up all of Cearths weekend on me.

On the drive home, the steering felt lighter and it seemed to ride the potholes better but maybe my imagination. I'll try a decent run out later...

All in all, a fun day that went much better than I expected.