Yeah, over at Nicks house today helping him out with the car. We started on the rear, removed the existing shocks and springs and the rear swaybar. First off the rear shocks where quite easy to take out. We jacked up the rear of the car via the differential and went to work.
We removed the rear seat, and the rear parcel shelf for access to the shock mounts. We freed the bottom fasteners and tried to take out the shocks but they wouldn't budge when the nuts where all unscrewed. There is a rubber boot on top of the shocks that was doing a fine job resisting our pulling, curses and cynical jibes about everything on the car requiring a knack like the front bumper cononector. They really were doing a fine job at preventing the shocks from coming out. For sometime we were miffed: it was as if a ghost was holding them. After removing that from the inside (a bit of trouble but not impossible) they fell out (it appears that once you remove the internal rubber cover and the 3 shock-mount nuts the rest will just drop down so we took a well-earned beer break. Actually we had it just be4 that, so the beer must have helped getting the struts out, as it usually can...
We got that sorted out and then put in the new shocks, springs and shock mounts. We didn't have a paper gasket so Nick's gf made two up for us. The shocks are bilstein sports and the springs are 540i springs. I never used a spring compressor before and we borrowed one of Nick's mate, Bob. They were homemade but did the job. Shocks are easy to remove. The install was a bit harder as the trailing arm had to be aligned to the rear shock and is a bugger to move down (another ghost force seems to push the trailing arm up when the strut (shock and spring) is removed from the vehicle- one has to chock it with a lump of wood to prevent damage to the half-shafts- but the force pushing it up was unexpected- Nick thought it woould drop down... we used the pole off the jackstand and the wood to bring it inline with the mounting points. This was really a two person job, and then in they went.
The rear swaybar was last. It's a 18mm bar and whoever says that you need to lower the rear exhaust to install it is telling fibs. We managed with a great deal of manouvering to get it aligned and installed without lowering it. Nick doesn't run an OEM exhaust so this may have something to do with it. New swaybarlinks accompinaed the bar also.
No we haven't finished yet.. more soon!
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