Isabel's West Coast Sister by relentless

4 minute(s) of a 187 minute read

Today a couple of items arrived. The first was the chrome bracket for the throttle cable off the carburetor. I will have to fabricate a small bracket to keep the main bracket from moving if it ever came loose on the main mounting bolt. But it was nice to get rid of the home-made bracket.





The spring compressor I purchased off Ebay arrived today. It is a very stout looking unit and definitely worth the investment if you want to do the job by yourself and not risk injury. The top nut takes a very large wrench. The compressor has a worm gear rod that I lubricated before use to make things easier.

The spring compressor mounts to the top of the shock tower just like the shock absorber.



The bottom mounts like the shock absorber as well, using two bolts that are welded on the bottom of the compressor. It was difficult to get the nut on the inner bolt. I had to hold the spring compressor up by pushing the outer bolt up to the bottom of the spring rocker, and then was able to get enough clearance to start the inner nut.  



Removing the spring took a while. After compressing the spring enough that I knew there was no pressure on the lower arm, I removed the nuts holding it to the spring rocker so that I could drop the lower arm enough to clear the two rocker bolts. At this point you can begin to back the spring off, letting it slip outward on the rocker arm. I ran into a problem when the spring and rocker reached the fully extended rocker arm and wanted to hang up there. I used a dead blow hammer to try to keep the spring and rocker slipping out and down, but there came a point where there just wasn't any clearance left.



So I ended up loosening the nuts on the bottom of the spring rocker that held the spring compressor on, and that eased the spring another 3/4" or so. After that I loosened the shock tower cap and tried to tip the top of the spring compressor farther inward in an attempt to cock the bottom of the compressor, spring, and spring rocker outward enough to clear the lower arm. This helped, but didn't take all the pressure off. Prying made the bottom piece pop out, with enough tension that I was a bit concerned about getting bit.



So I was finally able to remove the spring completely, after two to three hours! I measured the spring at 17 1/4" not including the upper spring isolator.



I now have enough information to shop for lowering springs.  

I tried to remove the control arm the spring rocker mounts to but there seems to be a clearance issue. I need to get it out so I can clean and repaint it, along with all the other components that have lost their clean shine.