How hard is it??

[broughy84]

Well it's time to change my struts on the front of my 98. So my question obviously is, How difficult are these to change. I have a lot of mechanical experience, and I have air tools and whatnot, Do I need any specialty tools for this? I am going ahead and changing the upper and lower balljoints and brake pads at the same time so I don't have to tear it apart again...


Anyway, I guess you can tell I got my tax check!

I don't want to pay anyone to do this, besides if I can rebuild and replace an engine and transmission, I think I can tackle this. I'm just looking for a "heads up."

[broughy84]

Bump

[gkindub]

broughy84, I replaced the front strut about 15k miles ago. Very straight forward except for the strut to steering knuckle bolts which need to be pressed or driven out. I used c-clamp and a large deep socket to press them out. Of course you'll need a spring compressor to swap out the old struts. Have not done anything w/ ball joints on this vehicle.
Regards, gb

[cdru]

You will hate the design engineers who made your vehicle. It's not really difficult, just very time consuming to remove the 3 nuts at the top of each tower. To get to them, you really need to remove the wiper linkage, a chore in and of itself.

I'd highly recommend once you get the struts out to take it to a shop to have the springs swapped. Most consumer spring compressors are an accident waiting to happen. A shop should be able to compress them and swap them out in a matter of minutes and it shouldn't cost too much. Be sure to replace all the rubber as well as the bearing as well.