FM Springs / Tokico Illumina assembly trouble
 

Really excited to get this setup in my car, but I'm having trouble assembling them. I rented a strut compressor from Autozone and set to work. The "dead" coils up top make do not work with the compressor, so I only have the lower 3 coils to work with to get the spring compressed enough. I can't go to the bottom because it won't fit on the shock. I fought with it for a while and finally got enough of the shaft to work with, so I pressed the FM top hat down and was able to get it both nuts threaded. Success? No! As I loosened the compressors, the spring started to bend, allowed by the bearing in the top hat. The top of the spring, the end of the coil, doesn't seem to compress enough to properly seat in the top hat, which barely fits the spring and only has a small lip to hold the spring in. I read the instructions, took the logical assembly path. Any tips? Tricks? Did I do something wrong? Didn't take pictures of the "assembled" shock, but it didn't look right at all, so I pressed the spring back down and took the thing apart, I didn't want to leave it there overnight. Thanks y'all.

Seriousness...do you have pics with it assembled with compressors off?

I'll get some tomorrow.

It's been a few years, but as I recall, on my NB the FM springs were short enough that I was able to install the top mounts into the car beforehand, and then place the springs over the shocks, install into the car, and then use a jack under the control arm to compress everything together before installing and tightening the shaft bolt. I don't think I used spring compressors at all to install the suspension.

It should be noted that this was on an NB with factory mounts, but I recall the install being easier than removing the factory suspension.

Make sure that all the bits and pieces are in the right order and oriented properly. It's pretty easy to get it wrong if you're not looking at a diagram of how it's supposed to go.

I was thinking about trying that, it may work as long as I have the spring seated properly under the top mount. I double and triple checked the make sure I have everything right. Don't need the spacer for the FM mounts, press sleeves into the bearing from top and bottom, big nut little nut then plastic doohicky.

You can always give FM a call so they can walk you through. They are very helpful and can make sure that you are putting everything together correctly.

I have never used a spring compressor. I just put the spring on the shock, put it up into place, install the lower shock bolt, slowly lower the jack- guiding the shock shaft into the top hat. Install nut. Done. Takes me like an hour to do all 4.

I am going to post the solution I found. See, there was something wrong with my eyes and the thing between my ears. The problem was that I was trying to put the rear top mounts on the front shocks/springs. My dumb ass was so focused on getting them on that it took two days of scratching my head to realize I was bass ackwards. So once I realized what I was doing, it took an hour to put all four together. Put them in the next day.


:bang: :yippee: