my trial and tribulations with installing new grab-a-trac 620# 1" lowering springs purchased thru moneymakerracing.com. As always safety is the main PRIORITY! So make sure you chock the wheels and utilize jack stands when needed. Since all I was doing was swapping the old springs for new I didn't have to order anything but the springs. Now would be a create time to replace worn spring insulators and any bad bushings in the perch and so on. I started off doing the driver side wheel, and performed the change over one side at a time.
first you want to break the lug nuts on the wheel since it will have to be removed to aid in the spring swap lol. But don't remove the wheel just yet since you need to use it when you raise and lower the car. I placed the jack on the cross member and jacked the vehicle up just enough so I could see the shock in the wheel well and get a wrench on it.
I had issues removing and installing shock nuts/washers on the back side so I had an unused wrench that I cut in half:
This gave me PLENTY of room as long as I had the right height on the jack:
I set the height with the jack so I could have the most room on the inside under the upper control arm and enough room to slid under the front end to perform the needed wrench work. With the bottom hardware removed i removed the top side hardware and pulled the shock out the top. Now I install the spring compressor designed by Tom or F15Falcon (
http://www.fordmuscle.com/forums/par...ompressor.html). This compressor gave me some issues but it worked out in the end. with the compressor bolted to the perch and mounted to the top I lowered the car all the way down with the jack, spun the lock nut/washer to the bottom and didn't even bother to tighten the nut up. I jacked the vehicle to the position that lifted the car up a bit so I could get a socket and ratchet on the perch nuts. I removed the perch nuts from the bottom and then jacked the vehicle up to get the wheel off the ground. i removed the wheel and you could see the perch separated from the UCA.
At this point I lower the compressor, this is the big problem with this compressor style. As the perch lowers to the top of the UCA I pulled the spring away from the frame. and it rests with some slack in the coil spring, this slack is just enough to go in and remove the perch just be careful b/c there still could be some compression on the spring. If you are using the other style compressor that has the arms then at this point the spring should fall right out. If you have issues with the arm style compressor you might not have enough room to tighten the compressor up and will have to install some washers/ spacers and then tighten the clamp on the spring. So now the old spring is out I had to remove the insulators that are new, this just required a punch and hammer which twisted the piece right out. to reinstall into the new spring I bent the isolator and slid it right into position. I had to pry a little with a bar to get it to fit in the tight spot at the end of the coil spring. Now is time for the install, get the correct orientation with the spring slide the perch under the spring and as a unit slide them up. with a little muscle I had them in enough that I could get my spring compressor onto the perch. With a arm style compressor you should not have to remove the perch at all so you don't need to worry about this part.
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With the spring compressor back on I cranked t up so I could push the perch bolts into the holes. this again required some muscle as the spring pushes out once its compressed. So I had to push on the spring to get it to slip into the proper holes, and installed the nuts so the spring wont pull the perch out and go haywire:
so at this point I reinstalled the wheel and snugged the lugs up. I lowered the car a bit so I could get the perch hardware tightened up. I did not remove the compressor until the perch was 100% tight just in case something let loose. I removed the compressor and reinstalled the shock. I again found a good spot for the best room under the UCA with my jack and tightened up the shock hardware. I find it a lot easier to tighten the bottom nuts and then the bolts topside as it requires a bit of flex from the shock to get the bolts and the shock holes to line up right. with everything tight and lowered I was finished:
Once the car was lowered she sat pretty high, you need to drive the car to get the tires and suspension to unload itself and get out of bind. from my research I found that new coil springs will tend to settle after some time and weight is left on them. so i would not cut the new springs until you know the settle period is over. It took me a little over 3 hours to perform this upgrade which included pulling tools out of the shed. Hope this helps someone, as it gets me closer to a perfect front suspension.
Today
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