Ok, I am calm now. Thanks both of you. I appretiate it very much. I was hoping not to mess with the upper A arm but I guess not. Will finish when I wake up. Thanks again.

I would like to note that disconnecting the upper control arm is not an obvious step in the swankmonkey DIY. Syntrix should add that step.

 

Use your stock bushing with the projection on it.....put it on the bottom over the JIC spacer...it will be tight because the rod dia is larger than the stock damper. put the hat on...then the JIC bushing on top...then the washer..then the Nylock nut. It will be a bit tight to do up....push hard on the spacer and start the threads carefully and then tighten it up. It helped get rid of the rattle/squeek for me as there is rubber between the shaft and the hat....not like the JIC bushings that don't have the projection

 

You can also put a bit of tubing over the top of the spring where it sits on the rubber seat...between the spring and the metal on the hat.........

 

"I just sold my other car so I am stuck with what materiel that I have. I feel helpless with only one car. Need to go buy another."

I was suggesting a car.


Relax.

 

I am really sorry dude. I was a little stressed and sleep deprived. Got to work on my anger management.

 

don't worry about it, we can all relate to the feeling when things don't go as planned, not having an alternate ride only compounds the situation

ps: that freaky avatar probably isn't helping

 

Thinking about a pickup. Unfortunately, all the 4x4s around here are expensive and I really dont want another car payment. (the family now has two.) Personal fav: '02 Supercharged Nissan Frontier. Last one I found on carmax was 17 large. I was hoping for, like, $7k.

BTW I wrote up a DIY for these shocks. A little more detailed than anything that I have found so far. I will post when I get to work. Should I make a DIY thread?

PS. new avatar.

 

I am getting the same annoying rattle on my left rear. Only happens when there is a large compression of the shock. I went back underneath today and preloaded the spring more, but that didn't really help. Am I looking @ a reinstall of the rear to tighten up the OE hat?

 

I assume you checked the lock ring on the mounting cup when you added pre-load. If not, make sure that's tight. Also, I'd recheck every bolt (lower mounting bolt, sway bar bolts, tower mounting bolts in the trunk, etc) before I'd pull the unit out to check the shock top bolt.

 

If it is a clunk....I have one on the right side....I put a bit of clear vinyl on the top of the spring where it touches the upper hat and it went away.....

 

Yup danobre, its definitely a clunk. Started last weekend after I lowered the car from its high winter ride height.

Thanks for the advice GeorgeH. Today I checked the lock ring, sway bar nuts, etc and all were tight. The car doesn't feel loose when driving, the clunk is just scary. I'll try the vinyl idea and get back to everyone.

 

There is a possibility that one of your lower links is rubbing on the body mounts....you might want to check the suspension travel if you really dropped it from stock height

 

Yah, drove it some more tonight and realized the clunk only happens when I hit a pothole that causes the suspension to travel downwards first. If I hit a bump for instance, the clunk doesn't happen. I might try to raise the suspension up a bit to see if that solves it.

 

Thanks all. Fixed the problem today. Raised the left rear up about 1/4 inch and that solved it.

 

Ok, running into another problem, I might have to start another thread.

Took a road trip this weekend and stopped to adjust the front dampening to be a little softer. I had never done this before so I did a check to mark the position of the **** as it was when I installed it. Much to my dismay I found the following.

Left Front Shock - 21 clicks from full soft to full hard (or 3 2/3 revolutions of ****)
Right Front Shock - 17 clicks from full soft to full hard (or 3 revolutions of ****)

I checked this at least 10 times while I was stopped. Now I'm wondering if I have a faulty set of coilovers. Another issue I noticed is when I hack the card up, the wheels almost stay stationary inside the wheel well (no downward travel). Is this normal?

 

Are you saying that you could turn the LF 21 clicks clockwise from where they were set when you intially stopped? And the RF was 17 clicks back? IIRC, the JICs have 16 clicks total range - i.e., to get to full stiff, turn the adjuster clockwise until it stops, and then count back 15 clicks to get to full soft. I'm not sure what happens when you take them out of this range. Where did you have them set when you installed them?

As for the wheel not moving when you jack the car up, that's not right. It means you have no droop travel, which is potentially dangerous.

It's possible you just have the spring perch to high and the shock bodies too short. Typically, you start the tuning process by setting the spring perches so that they have almost no pre-load - i.e., just enough so that the springs don't rattle when the shock is unloaded. Then, with zero pre-load, you use the shock body length adjustment to set the ride height, leaving the spring perch alone.

Whith the car jacked up, you should be able to grab the spring and slide it around a little on it's perch. If you can't move the spring, then you've got preload.

Zero preload should give 2 inches of droop travel. So, when you jack the car up, the wheel should droop a bit (but not as much as stock).

Now, there's nothing wrong with a little pre-load - it just moves some of the droop travel over to bump travel. But too much preload and you eat up all your droop travel, and the wheel won't be able to follow the contours of the road. Very bad.

If you've got zero preload, or perhaps 3-4 turns, and the wheel isn't drooping you may have some other problem.

 

To adjust the shocks you turn the **** full hard and then count clicks back to soft. Once you get past 15 there is no more adjustment even if it turns. This is in the instuctions from JIC. Email me if you dont have them. This is not a problem.

As long as you dont have the preload set more than just barely compressed, the wheel will not droop much when you jack up the car; this is what you get when you move to stiffer springs. This is normal and is not a problem. You should only have about an inch of droop with the JIC FLT-A2s (soft). Maybe less with the h(hard). You should be able to lift TWO WHEELS when you jack up your car on one corner. This is disconserting, but normal.

NO!!!! This is bad. You do not want the spring to move AT ALL when the strut is in full extention! You should have the preload set so that the spring is JUST BARELY compressed at full extention. To get proper cornerweight, one side might be slightly more loaded than the other, BUT THE SPRING SHOULD NOT MOVE.

Consider this. You go over a bump and completely release the tension on the spring. The spring shifts EVER SO SLIGHTLY so than the preload, when the compression returns, is just ever so slightly more or less than it was before. Now your $175 custom alighnment IS NULL AND VOID!

 

You misunderstand. When I say move around, I don't mean that it should rattle at full extension - I mean you should be able slide the spring laterally on the perch (just a little) if you grasp the spring and tug on it when the shock is unloaded. As I stated above, you want just enough preload to keep the spring from rattling, but not too much - at least as a starting point.

If he can't move the spring, it means there is more than just a little compression force in the spring in the unloaded state and it's possible he has a too much preload, which will shift the travel from droop to bump. This would explain why he doesn't get much extension when he jacks up the car.

Of course, some preload may be necessary, especially with the soft springs. But, you need to be careful when setting these up - if you rely strictly ont the spring perch when setting ride height it's possible you will eat most of your droop travel up unknowingly.