[sapphire black]

Hey guys,

Finally got around to doing my coilovers, but been stuck on this part for hours!

Im at the step after reinstalling the shocks and spring, i cannot get the hole to line up for the rear control arm to connect to the wheel hub. It seems i need to articulate the wheel hub to toe out a bit more, but its very tough to get it to stay long enough to get the bolt through.

I use a long screwdriver to articulate the hole to line up at much as possible but it just won’t come out the other side.

I’m considering loosening the eccentric bolt at the ‘rear’ of the control arm to get some more play in the control arm. I understand i should leave witness marks if I do this.

Any other help or advice is super appreciated 🙏

[Polo08816]

Sometimes you need another jack to move the wheel hub slightly just to get it in position.

[_ObiJon]

Originally Posted by Polo08816

Sometimes you need another jack to move the wheel hub slightly just to get it in position.

This.

But also, you can bolt a boxed ended wrench to one of the lug bolts to help with leverage to articulate the hub on its axis.

[Orion4]

2 jack method works!

[casualDIYer]

Originally Posted by Polo08816

Sometimes you need another jack to move the wheel hub slightly just to get it in position.

That’s what I did. One side took 2 hours. The other, 30 mins.

[Polo08816]

I will add that after this initial experience, I've accepted that the fastest method will be to remove the eccentric bolt in order to remove/install springs. I only loosen the bolt that goes into the wheel hub carrier. If you mark where the eccentric bolt was previously, your alignment should be close enough that you won't tear your tires up driving to get the car aligned.

[sapphire black]

Thanks everyone for the ideas, this is great feedback for myself and future DIYers. It seems a lot of people are pointing to the two jack method. Also good to know the camber bolt method can be used in a pinch.

I ended up not doing any of those but I grabbed a buddy and had a go at it the next day and got it in after about 20 minutes. All I needed was to remove the damper first, then have my friend force the bolt through with a mallet while I tugged outwards on the wheel hub (toe out). Also what worked best for me was having the jack inline with the camber arm (from under the car towards the wheel), but not sure if that made a huge difference.

I did try loosening the camber bolt but I couldn't get it to budge. It's hard to do if you're working under the car with just jackstands. I didn't want to use the impact on the eccentric bolt. Luckily the brute force method did the trick pretty quickly once I got help.

For the record I'm working on a driveway with a very very slight incline. I'm thinking that might be contributing to the issue. I'll have a go at the other wheel tomorrow and see if I need help again.


Also side note - I was wondering about the rear ride height for a while now as there seems to be a lot of posts re ST XA coilovers having a very low minimum drop setting. I wanted to keep the ride height similar to my eibach sportlines (advertised 20mm drop). The ST website advertises a minimum 30mm drop, so I was expecting the new coils to drop more than the sportlines.

So I set the coils at the max of the adjustment range of 40mm. After dropping the car, and riding it around the block, I found the ride height was almost 23mm higher than the eibach sportlines, the gap looked huge! Also, comparing the new coil springs with my old sportlines, it definitely looks like the sportlines are significantly shorter than the STXA, so I don't think it's from an installation problem, that's just how they are. Anyway I'll know for sure once I put on the other side.

[sapphire black]

On the second wheel I figured out a surefire solution.

The reason it was so hard to align is because I hadn’t jacked it up high enough.

I realized after jacking up the the control arm a few pumps, the hole towards the rear of the car will line up with the hub but the hole to the front is not aligned horizontally because the hub is too far from the car, and no amount of tugging gets it to align.

You have to jack up to align the rear hole first, insert the bolt halfway through to hold the hub to the arm, then keep jacking up the control arm. This causes the hub to not only move upwards, but also ROTATE, which brings the hub closer to the car bringing the front hole closer horizontally in alignment. Then it does still take some force to pull the hub upwards - but it works very predictably.

Hope this helps someone in the future, it’s a very easy solution that probably seems like common sense to more experienced wrenchers.

[Polo08816]

Originally Posted by sapphire black

On the second wheel I figured out a surefire solution.

The reason it was so hard to align is because I hadn’t jacked it up high enough.

I realized after jacking up the the control arm a few pumps, the hole towards the rear of the car will line up with the hub but the hole to the front is not aligned horizontally because the hub is too far from the car, and no amount of tugging gets it to align.

You have to jack up to align the rear hole first, insert the bolt halfway through to hold the hub to the arm, then keep jacking up the control arm. This causes the hub to not only move upwards, but also ROTATE, which brings the hub closer to the car bringing the front hole closer horizontally in alignment. Then it does still take some force to pull the hub upwards - but it works very predictably.

Hope this helps someone in the future, it’s a very easy solution that probably seems like common sense to more experienced wrenchers.

Still, in my opinion, it's much easier and faster to remove the eccentric bolt. You get better leverage on the lower control arm and you can use a pry bar to guide it right into place while you jack it up.

If you're changing out the springs, you're going to need an alignment anyways.

If you're just changing the shocks, you don't need to remove either the eccentric bolt or the bolt to the wheel hub carrier - you just need to loosen them.