Wisconsin Joe

85 Euro S2.

I got a set of the Sachs (Boge equivalent) shocks from Roger last summer when they were on sale.

With the car put away for the winter, I am in the process of swapping them over.

Coilovers are out. I was fortunate that the pins on the rear (both sides) came out reasonably easily. Fronts came out by unbolting the LCAs & manipulating the spindle with a jack to get the upper at the right angle. Not a lot of room for the fronts to come out.
Currently soaking the adjusters in penetrating oil. I've found & read how much fun they can be. Given the overall condition of everything underneath, I'm not terribly worried.

I have access to a good spring compressor (wall mount unit). I've read through the WSM on the procedure, it seems reasonably straight forward.

I did some searching for anything on disassembly/reassembly of the coilovers, but came up empty.

Anything special? Anybody got a link to any threads that cover it?
Or am I overthinking it (not unusual)?

Thanks

Mrmerlin

Joe for your car you should also have on hand the 2 front and 2 rear bump stops as most of them are turned to dust by now.
Best bet have a good vice and a Mapp gas torch ,
put PB blaster on the threads of the adjusters then wire brush them to clean the threads, then break them loose .

Also clean the shock body of all cosmoline and dirt so the adjusters will slide off, PB works good for this .
Heat the collar then drive the shock out of the adjuster with a big hammer.
Use anti seize on the lower link pins and wheel bearing grease on the angled washers to hold them in place.
Mix grease and anti seize and coat the threads of the adjusters and lower spring perches so they spin easily.
Ohlins makes a good spanner wrench.
When refitting the collars I make sure the inside bore is clean ,
then use some green locktite on the bosses of the shock so they stay in place
Heat the collar a bit and it will be easy to drive the shock into its seated area

Billu

Geza

I recently did this job. I took some measurements of the spring mount collar locations before removing them, so I could reset them close to the previous ride height, once on the new shock. It's pretty obvious, but you also have to tap off the cap on the shock to remove the adjustment collar. After soaking in stuff, my collars came off pretty easily, just with some tapping with a rubber mallet. Before relieving the spring pressure in the compressor, try to get the relative orientation of the upper mount to the lower shock mount as close as you can, so minimal fiddling is required during installation.

I'm probably wrong, but I could swear that the lower shock mount on the rear shocks are biased slightly towards one side (not symetrical to the centerline of the shock). I was probably hallucinating.

Wisconsin Joe

No, you aren't hallucinating.

The bottom of the shock is canted. Only a bit, but enough that getting it in backwards is very difficult. Not impossible, but very difficult (One of Murphy's corollaries applies to this). Once in backwards, its nearly impossible to get the pin back out.

Thanks for the tip on the bump stops, Stan. I could see one of them and it's a bit chewed up. Since I don't need the car until spring, taking them apart, evaluating the situation, ordering any parts (and waiting for them to show up), and reassembling them in a week or so is not a problem.

The spring compressor is in a friend's shop. They have all the tools I will need, and an Oxy/Acetylene torch if needed.

Do you mean the dust covers that are over the shaft? Thanks.

I was there Wed thru Sun. Got a bunch of belly stuff in with Amanda Lampton & Steve Lefkowitz. Tried "angly stuff" with Dane & Dan. Lots of fun.

Wisconsin Joe

Ok, progress. Some success, some questions.

Pretty sure someone's been in here before. And it appears they knew what they were doing.

Fronts came apart great!!! Whoever put them together put a lot of antiseize (didn't appear to be mixed with grease) on the adjusters. I wiped off the accumulated crud (mostly brake dust) and they broke loose and spun off with little effort. The sleeves tapped off the shock body without any drama.

Backs were similar. Nicely coated, adjusters broke loose easily and spun off by hand, once the threads were cleaned out.

But the sleeves aren't moving.
I used some heat, but not a lot. The guys at the shop were very hesitant to use heat on a gas shock, even though the pressure seems to be gone (the pistons don't pop back out when pushed in).

With the outer collars off, trying to push down on the sleeves is deforming the edge of the sleeve.

I guess my main question is:
Should I screw the outer collars back on and use those to push the sleeves off of the shock? Or will that damage the threads?

Geza

I tapped mine off with the threaded sleeves assembled, both front and rear, using a rubber mallet. The threads support the weight of the car - you should be OK.

Wisconsin Joe

Thanks. That's what I was thinking, but I wanted some confirmation.

One other option that occurred to me was to put it in a press and use steady pressure instead of impact (hammer blows).

Rob Edwards

Yes, put the collar back on, and maximize thread engagement. Remove the metal cap ('supporting cover') from the top of the shock (you don't want to press this on harder, so remove it first) , then find a piece of pipe with OD about the same as the shock body, and press it off. VW makes a tool (VW422a) that fits over the shock piston rod and seats on the OD of the top of the shock body. But any section of pipe about 10-12" long should do the same thing.

Forgive the Darwin-award spacer setup in this pic, I should have moved the bed of the press upwards.

jpitman2

The only odd part I found was that the top mount of the rear shocks is asymmetric - first one went back in quickly, second one was a real PITA until I saw the asymmetry!
jp 83 Euro S AT 57k M474 Bilsteins

Mrmerlin

^^^ what this means is that the top mount will only fit into the chassis one way

chart928s4

If all else fails, I bought used adjusters for $25/ea from Mark Anderson. Money well spent after 2 unsuccessful hours trying to get anything to move. For me this part is in the finals for the Worst Design Award.

Oddities: The new little yellow plated caps have to be hammered onto the new shocks. I used a length of PVC pipe. The new/used adjusters went on the same way with a bigger PVC pipe.

Otherwise, my first shock replacement experience was much more routine than I expected.

Wisconsin Joe

A bit of an update:

Due to work and the fact that I didn't leave my house for two days, I'm not moving super fast on this. The car won't be out for another couple of months, so it's not a big deal.

A press took the rear adjusters off very nicely. I set the bed of the press at the correct height (had to move it once during process), so I didn't have Rob's "Darwin Award" spacer setup. I can be stupid, but I try to avoid that when using large amounts of force.

Fronts are all back together. Adjuster collars went on nicely, a bit of grease and 10 min at 350F works wonders.
I made the foolish mistake of putting the brass caps on before putting the lower spring plates on. So the caps had to come off.
Bump stops are now new*. It turns out there were four rear bump stops on the shocks.
Springs are back on, the wall mount compressor is very nice to use. Still sort of scary, but nowhere near what the 'el cheapo' one would be.
Made sure the ends of the springs are in the 'pockets' on the top & bottom plate.

So far, so good. Plans are to install fronts today or tomorrow, put rears together Monday, when the shop I do this at is open.

* - In a somehow 'not terribly surprising' way, I got my bump stops from Roger. Sent the first e-mail at 6:45 Friday morning. Got a quote before 9. Got confirmation by 2:30 and USPS tracking e-mail by 5. They arrived on Tuesday. Roger rocks!!! (Yeah, I know, water is also wet and the sky is also blue)

Wisconsin Joe

Ok, because I hate threads without resolution, here's how it worked out.

Pressing the adjusters off the rear shocks worked very well. Pressing them back on the new ones worked equally well. It took more effort to clean out the inside of the adjuster sleeves than to put them back on.

Getting the fronts both out & in was a pain. WSM says to remove the upper arm and separate the ball joint. I chose not to go that route, took the lower arm off the body, rotated it out of the way and got the coilover out and in that way. The upper arm has to be at just the right angle to do this. I used a jack under the spindle to lift it. The lower arm wanted to swing around and the spindle wanted to pivot and fall off the jack. The spring will not quite fit through the arm, so it has to be 'walked' up and in. Of course, it had to be walked, wiggled, and worked out. Yet after fighting and struggling to get it 3/4 of the way up, letting it go would result in it freely falling most of the way down. Go figure.

Rears were a piece of cake compared to the fronts. Got them up into the hole, put the jack under the bottom. That let me move them up 'just a bit' at a time, so that I could line up the studs with the holes. As noted above, they only fit one way. The 3 studs are not symmetrical. But it's not hard to see, if you know to look for it.

Getting the lower pin in the rears was easier than I expected. A bit of wiggling, again using the jack to support the arm & hub carrier and get each section lined up. I just went one section at a time, and used a hammer & block of wood to (gently) tap the pin in.
Stan's suggestion to use grease on the cone washers (front & back of hub carrier) is great. The grease acted like glue and held them in place while I got the hub carrier in place. It would have taken an extra hand (or two) to hold the washers in place while lining up the hub carrier.

Interestingly, there is a large washer that goes between the back of the shock and the rear part of the Weissach arm. It shows on the exploded view in the WSM, but not in the PET. That confused me for a bit. I was using the PET diagrams more than the WSM and couldn't remember where it had been taken out from.

Thanks to everyone who gave me the suggestions and advice. I probably could have gotten through it with just the PET & WSM, but having my thoughts confirmed before I got in too deep always makes it less stressful.

Everything is back together, but I'm putting new tires on, so car is still up in the air. I will have to get it on the ground and set ride height. Rear can be done right away, but front will have to wait until I can drive it and settle the suspension.

Mrmerlin

for ride height you should drive the car for about 200 miles before taking measurements this will provide you with a settled suspension
NOTE leave the rear LCA clamp bolts one turn loose and drive the car for a few miles then torque these cap bolts to 88 ft/lbs while the car is sitting on the wheels