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Coilover and Wheel Installation - May 22, 2008

1. Before putting anything on the car, I did some research to get an idea of what initial height I should use for the coilovers. I read through reviews of the KTS coilovers and looked at pictures of people's cars with the coilovers installed. From the pictures, I saw that in order to get a decent starting front ride height, the shock body should extend about two inches out from the bottom of the spindle mount. This is how I set up both front coilovers.
   
2. Then, I set the spring perch on one of the coilovers such that it would apply just enough tension to the spring to keep it in place. This left about 1.25 inches between the spindle mount and spring perch on the coilover. I set the spring perch to the same height on the other front coilover.
   
3. Next, I attached the blue rebound adjustment knobs to the bottom of the front coilovers using the supplied Allen wrench.
   
   
4. I prepared the rear coilover in a similar way. From everything I read, people were saying that the rear coilovers did not go very low. For that reason, I threaded the bottom mounts on the rear coilovers as far up as possible to get the back of the car as low as possible. I adjusted the spring perch on one of the rear coilovers so that it would put just enough tension on the spring to hold it in place. This puts the spring perch about 4.5 inches above the bottom mount. I adjusted the other rear coilover to the same height.
   
5. Then, I installed the rebound adjustment knobs on the top of the rear shocks.
   
6. I left the camber plates on the center marks, which should give a decent amount of negative camber. The coilovers came with eight more bolts that can be threaded into the camber plates. However, I've never seen any more than four bolts used on the plates, so I'm not going to put these on for now.
   
7. To install the coilovers, I first took off the rear struts by removing the nut on the lower mount and the two nuts on the strut tower on each side of the car that hold the struts in place.
8. Then, I installed the rear coilovers. I had to jack up the lower control arms on the car since the coilovers are significantly shorter than the struts. I also had to cut out some of the interior panels above the rear strut towers because the coilover adjustment knobs were pressing against the panels.
9. I installed the wheels after putting on the coilovers.
   
10. Next, I removed the front struts and put on the front coilovers. These are held in place by three nuts on the strut tower and two bolts on the spindle on each side of the car. I removed the camber bolts I had previously installed because I could now adjust camber with the camber plates.
11. Since the top holes on the coilover spindle mounts are slotted, I pushed the top of the spindle as far in towards the car as possible to get more negative camber.
12. After tightening all of the fasteners, I installed the wheels and lowered the car on the ground. I had to raise the back of the car since it was sitting too low. I moved the bottom mounts on the rear coilovers down about an inch, which made the rear ride height more reasonable.
13. Since the tires were essentially flush with the fenders, I had to roll the fender lips on both the front and back fenders to make sure the tires wouldn't rub. I did this by heating each fender with a heat gun and then using a hammer to bend in the fender lip. I held a block of wood on the other side of the fender to distribute the shock of the hammer and keep from denting the fenders. I decided not to get a fender roller since I wasnted too worried about cracking the paint. The car will be getting repainted at some point anyway.

The new wheels have a much thicker center section than the stock wheels for the car. Therefore, the lug nuts do not thread in all the way onto the studs. Since they do go in about 10 turns, I decided that it would be safe to drive with it that way for now. But I'll be ordering longer studs soon to get the lug nuts to engage completely.

I didn't take too many pictures of the installation process since I was in a rush to get it done before tomorrow's autocross event. But here are some pictures with the coilovers already installed.