So some may have read my thread regarding my Evo handling like crap. The guru's diagnosed it as blown factory Bilsteins due to the bouncy rebound characteristics. I have a spare set of Bilsteins so I decided I'd just send those in for a rebuild to Bilstein West.

So that was a few weeks ago, and my spare Bilys have been sitting in an open box in the middle of the garage. I rented a spring compressor and decided to break them down and send them off today.

Note: Spring compressor is not needed on the rear, just put your shoe on the spring and spin the nut off. No "pop" or spring effect. As a matter of fact, I can press the rear springs down by hand when reinstalling. So only needed for the front and be careful... But that is not the warning.

While boxing my Bilsteins up, I grabbed some of that wadded up cardboard-paper and stuffed it around my shocks. I was still wearing gloves while handling the shocks... Well... The second to last piece I picked up had a black dangly about 8 inches below it. It brushed my bare arm as it caught my peripheral vision, and I dropped the whole damn thing into the box.

I debated a moment about investigating... and decided that I didn't really want to. I shook my black work jeans, kicked my black shoes against the steps, checked my dark red and black shirt in the mirror in the garage, and shook the crap out of the remaining paper. No perpetrator.

I then decided I wouldn't appreciate it if someone shipped me a box with an unknown black dot inside it, so I proceeded to remove some things and shake the box top.

A large bodied, pointy legged beast of a spider started across the inside of the box top. I made a noise that was somewhere between Macaulay Caulkin in Home Alone, 3rd Bass's Gas Face noise, and Jim Carrey freaking out about the great white bat. I then proceeded to swat the spider off the box top onto the concrete and crush it with a rubber mallet. I am probably 90% certain it was a Black Widow, but could not be completely sure as it had some juice on it's back after being smashed with a large rubber mallet.

So the warning is: Even though the boxes and materials are WELL inside the garage door 15+feet, and there are no signs of creatures, wear gloves and shake out anything that you are working with.

My poll question is: Do you think I did the right thing? I could have just boxed it up and written SPIDER! on the outside of the box. Would you have went the heroic route to save a Bilstein tech the annoyance of being bitten by a deadly spider?

In any event, if you are shipping your Bilys off to Bilstein West for a rebuild, it will cost you ~$55 from the East Coast. Also, you can thank me for the reduced turnaround since I saved a tech.

 

 

If I ever receive box that says "SPIDER!" on it, I am setting it on fire and running away. And probably hiding in a corner for the rest of the day.

- drew

 

The spider probably went into a vegetative state from all your screaming & commotion.. LOL

Good call on keeping the Bilsteins & getting them rebuilt! I had Bilstein rebuild a blown set for me back in January. I bought some for CHEAP off a local Evo owner...anothor victim of Tein S-techs.. One thing I did have Bilstein do is match the valving to my GTWorx springs Can't wait to get the rest of my suspension pieces & get everything installed! Give us an update when you get them back & installed! I'd like to know what you think of the ride.. Did you stick with factory valving or custom?

 

I was changing oil on my WRX. Subaru, just for chuckles, put the drain plug on the side of the pan instead of the usual location. Meanwhile, my mind was in neutral and I unscrewed the the plug expecting oil to go into the drain pan like it does under any other car. Oil shot out sideways and before I could react I had a lake of oil on the pavement.

I grabbed a half bag of oil dry and began throwing handfuls under the car. One of the handfulls I scooped out felt soft and wiggley. I immediately threw what was in my hand and saw that what I had scooped out with my bare pinkies was a huge spider. He got the Felco wrench treatment.

 

I didn't know struts could be rebuilt?? Will KYB do the same for the stock '03 struts? How much does it cost if you don't send them a spider?? Oh yeah...Nice job on being a hero!!!

 

Sorry, KYB's cannot be rebuilt.

 

Only the Bilsteins can be rebuilt - KYB's are throwaways. It costs like $65 per shock, $75 per strut..? Custom valving is free. They already have them apart, so to change the rate is free! The shocks I bought used got majorly raped by the Teins. Right front needed a new piston machined, so that cost extra. Overall though, it cost me right about what guys ask for used Bilsteins on the forum here. Can't wait to see what the end result will be like! If u want more info on that stuff, either contact Bilstein, or contact Andrew from GTWorx. The guy's a major G, knows his stuff & can give u recommendations based on what u want to use your car for.

 

Man up and stop being a little girl

 

This.

I can't imagine how pissed I'd be if a giant spider popped out, and I noticed later that "SPIDER!" was written on the box. I can say for sure that not only would the parts not get serviced, they would probably get "lost" in the dumpster.

Yeah, I thought about custom valving them, but since I'm not certain which spring I'll be running long-term, I'm just going to have them done to stock. I'm not going to compete, so I'm thinking stock valving+Spec R's for now.

Won't stick your bare hand in the oil dry again without looking... will you?! Thanks for the story, now there is one more thing in my garage for me to worry about.

Thanks, and barneyb is correct the KYB's don't get rebuilt. Find a used set of Bilsteins cheap but plan on rebuilding them immediately.

I did talk to Drew and Smike, as well as local track junkie Jim from http://jimsgarage.wordpress.com/. For my needs, I'm going to rock stock valving on these, probably with Spec R's, as I like my handling a little spirited, but don't need the extra .1 second around a cone course. Plus I don't want them revalved to a spring I'm not running. Swift engineered their springs to work with factory valving, so I'm not going to mess with it.

No can do broseph. They're too small to identify rapidly. While most spiders are harmless; the two exceptions in the U.S. are the Black Widow and Brown Recluse spiders. I'm not trying to suffer a dangerous spider bite in the line of duty of packing up a box because they don't have SPEED in the hospital, and the 24 hours of LeMans is on.

 

Actually, all spiders subdue their prey by injecting venom. Some spiders may be so tiny that their fangs cannot peirce human skin. But then the thickness of the skin varies on different parts of our body. Some spiders have venom that isn't very effective on humans. But, their bite is still going to hurt.

The other day I was researching how to identify a Brown Recluse. The way you do it is by counting the number of eyes. Other than that they look identical to a number of other spiders. So, carry a microscope. A Brown Recluse has six eyes instead of the usual eight.

 

^ Or, kill all spiders that come within a hundred yards of me. Or run like a girl. That's my plan.

- drew

 

Thanks for making my day.

 

Propane tank was definitely the best option in the poll.

Here's what was waiting for me a number of years ago when vacationing in the Phillippines - about the size of my hand, lurking in the bathroom.



I took some pics, and then warned my wife, who went in and was like, "what spider? I don't see anything..." So I checked, and it was gone. This on the day we were checking out of the hotel (aka Tiki Hut), which led me to frantically go through all of my bags to make sure I didn't have a stow-away. LOL.

...oh, and this is what passed for local airport security.



l8r)

 

oh god no!