Gonna nab me a set, and im wondering how difficult they are to install...
Cant find any write ups, so im posting .. thx

is there anything else i can upgrade when i do this?

 

The Evo has one of the easiest suspensions I have ever worked on.

If you do it by yourself and screw around, it should take less than 3 hours. If you get a friend and actually work hard, you can do it in under 2.

Just get it professionally aligned and cornerweighted afterwards and you're all good.

OH yeah, don't forget to call Robi from Robispec and get it properly set up if you want maximum performance.

 

I see Robi all over the place. Is he the king of evo suspension?

 

I have never worked on suspension in my life and I put my TEIN Flex Coilovers on yesterday in 3 hours. Pretty easy. And that 3 hours was with clean-up time.

 

coilovers are super easy if they come assembled.

if they don't come assembled, they are still easy, but using spring compressors is tedious at best.

one of my buddies ordered a set of ohlins from works a couple months ago, and they came pre assembled. we had them installed in about 3.5 hours, and that included alot of beer drinking and f**king around.

i just recently put some works springs on my car. so a similar job to coilover that don't come put together. it took about 5 hours total simply because there was alot of ratchet use on the spring compressors.

basically you just jack the car up and take the wheels off. for the front, remove the two bolts from the bottom of the strut that connect it to the knuckle, and the three nuts on the top of the strut that mount it into the engine bay. then switch it with the new suspension, taking care to remember which way the bolts on the bottom of the strut went it.

one of the two bolts on the bottom of the strut has an arrow on the head. i believe stock it points in. if you reverse the direction of that bolt it will give you about 1 extra degree of negative camber.

same concept with the rear suspension except that the bottom of the shock connects directly to the lower control arm with only bolt, there are only two bolts holding it in at the top, and no camber bolts with an arrow on the bottom of the shock. when you do the rears, make sure to place some load on the lower control arm before you tighten the bolt on the bottom of the shock. my directions i got from works said it could damage the bushings in the lower control arm of you tighten it with no load on the lower control arm.

all in all pretty easy though.

 

very easy

 

Using a floor jack to jack up the hub makes it 10x easier, than to muscle it on to the damper.

 

Yeah, its a pretty easy install. You may want to look at getting a rear swaybar as well if you dont have one already.

 

With a lift im in and out in 1 1/2 hours doing an evo suspension. Cake compared to anything i have ever worked on.

 

Definitely a doing it yourself thing if the coilovers are assembled and ride height was previous adjusted. If not, you would need to determine the ride height of your car, then it is super tedious to jack the car up, take the wheel off, adjust the ride height, put the wheel back on, lower the car, do it for all 4 wheels, drive around and make sure the coilovers are settled, and remeasure. If it's not right, do it over again.

I can install all 4 coilovers in less then two hours, that's with a bunch of "practice". Dont forget to remove the brake line bracket on the back of the front struts with 13mm wrench, and remove the lower rear swaybar endlink first for the rear shocks. You would need 13mm, 14mm, 17mm, 19mm sockets and wrench, and make sure your front strut lower camber bolt is exactly the same way you took out. "Triangle" towards you for more camber, away from you for less. Good luck.

 

Definitely need a braker-rod for that 19mm bolt! My passenger side front was so tight I cracked a socket when I did my springs!

I'd never touched suspension before either, and I installed my Swift springs by myself. I plan to install my own coilovers when I get the money to buy them...
Btw, if you are installing your own springs, you don't need a spring compressor for the rear!

 

I installed me own Robispec KW clubsports and it took about 4.5 hours just simply cause the stock camber bolts in front refused to come out. I penatrating lubed the crap out of them and ended up needing to use a long handle sledge hammer to finaly get them out Oh well, nothing got broke and they did come out with a couple well placed strikes.

 

The hardest bolts for me, were the very first two I had tried. Driverside front, both 19mm wouldnt budge. Keep in mind, im about a buck 50, and i held onto the fender while jumping up & down on the torque wrench without it even budging. Then once that didnt work, I grabbed ahold of the bar, willed it to break, and suddenly it did in 1 second. WTF

 

for future jobs, you should really get a breaker bar...it's not good practice to break things loose with a ratchet wrench, let alone a torque wrench

 

Breaker bar with a 6 foot steel pole that'll break any bolt good or bad