Well, Mrs Fin is out of town and her Rav4 needs new struts and shocks. The shop we take our vehicles to quoted her something in the $700 to $800 range to replace them. I called around and found that I could get the parts for less than $300 so I thought I would save us some money and do them myself. After all, how hard can it be?
Heaven help me!!!!!
I started out at around 9 am getting parts and tracking down tools. It turned out the Checker I bought the parts at had already loaned out their spring compressor and the local tool rental didn't have one so a quick trip to Harbor Freight and $15 later and I am the proud owner of a spring compressor that I will probably never use again. Anyway that was the lead in to a days worth of car wars. There were a couple of false starts, backtracks and take it apart and do it agains. There was even one point as I was in the middle of attempting to do a two person job myself where I heard... "Hello I'm with Teen challenge, a group that tries to keep teens off drugs." Fortunately it didn't take much to convince him that his timing was rather poor. Anyway with the setting sun I managed to get the second strut in place and put it all back together. Tomorrow I get to take the wheels off again to torque some bolts to the proper spec and then I can tackle the rear shocks. Hopefully they will be a bit simpler!
So the question I have now is: Why do I hurt so much!!!!
Heaven help me!!!!!
I started out at around 9 am getting parts and tracking down tools. It turned out the Checker I bought the parts at had already loaned out their spring compressor and the local tool rental didn't have one so a quick trip to Harbor Freight and $15 later and I am the proud owner of a spring compressor that I will probably never use again. Anyway that was the lead in to a days worth of car wars. There were a couple of false starts, backtracks and take it apart and do it agains. There was even one point as I was in the middle of attempting to do a two person job myself where I heard... "Hello I'm with Teen challenge, a group that tries to keep teens off drugs." Fortunately it didn't take much to convince him that his timing was rather poor. Anyway with the setting sun I managed to get the second strut in place and put it all back together. Tomorrow I get to take the wheels off again to torque some bolts to the proper spec and then I can tackle the rear shocks. Hopefully they will be a bit simpler!
So the question I have now is: Why do I hurt so much!!!!
I found this out after attempting to do it myself. I finally took it to a shop that had a compressor that fit. They said they usually only use it for the biggest of the big trucks.........when I picked up the car the guy told me that those mega springs almost killed him when they finally got them out!