Help, Newbie trying to put front suspension together

[HIWAY ONE]

Completely disassembled front suspension, sandblasted and painted. Bought tokicko springs and illumina adjustables. Go to put it together.

Put in strut cartridge. put in oil in strut tube. Screw on cap. Put on dust boot. Slide spring on, seat it in bottom spring seat. Put on bump stop with narrow end down. Slide on top spring seat. Put onstrut bearing. put on top insulator. put on nut which goes on top of strut cartridge. Should be done, but no tension on coil spring, not even seating in top seat. Either spring is too short or something is not assembled correctly. Anybody have any ideas on how i screwed up?

[PETEW]

Sounds like you got it right to me. Make sure the spring is the front spring not the rear. Other than that alot of the lowering springs don't touch both ends when the car is not on the wheels. I didn't like that, that's why I choked up the extra money for coil overs. Good luck on the project, sounds like your doing it right.

[Afshin]

Ditto, it all sounds right. Don't worry there will be plenty of tension when they are on the car. The same thing happens in many cars when you put on the shorter springs, I have installed eibachs on Z's, supra mach III, 240sx and honda prelude and did not need a spring compressor when installing the eibach's in any of them because of the lack of tension with the shorter springs . Results were great on all of the cars.

Enjoy the ride.

[Guest Z-rific]

Same here. I put Tokico HP's and springs on front and when the front is off the ground, you can turn the spring with your hand.

 

It's really not that big of a deal. When weight is on the spring it will seat properly. I'm sure you noticed how much smaller the new springs are vs. the originals.

 

I would like about 1" more ride height in front. Instead of buying new springs, I'm thinking about fabricating a spacer to sit underneath the spring. It will have to have a lip, just like the spring perch.