Today I decided to go ahead and do the front suspension refresh myself. I was hesitant for a while, mainly because my hands were so messed up from refinishing furniture. Jeez...what a biotch! I moved recently, and before the move, I decided to refinish some old, not so great family furniture I ended up with because none of my siblings wanted it. I guess it was from the chemicals I used like lacquer thinner, stripper, mineral spirits, stain, etc., but man my hands were raw. I had splits on my thumbs and fingers the size of the grand canyon and the only thing that helped was heavy doses of pain relieving Neosporin. Better now, so on to the front suspension.
In the exodus following my divorce about 6 years ago, I left all the tools I had been collecting for years in my old garage, so today I went to Sears and Harbor freight and bought about $500 worth of stuff to help me with the refresh. I got a great big set of Craftsman sockets and wrenches, a floor jack, some jack stands, a big heavy bench vice to install the Rogue FCAB's I got, stuffed all of it into the trunk and headed home. I doubt all of it weighed more than 200 pounds or so, excluding my dog, but you would have thought it was way more by the way my car felt on the way home. It's a good thing I got all this crap, because shocks and springs or coil-over's are definitely next on the horizon. I got some gloves too
Hopefully, by the end of the day tomorrow, I will have installed the new front control arms, Rogue bushings, tie rod ends, sway bar links and rubber boots. I seriously doubt I'll ever track my car, so I opted out of all the adjustable stuff for now. Next up is a rear refresh, most likely some decent coil-overs, new tires and new wheels.
Oh yea, is anyone here running the AST coil-overs? I was leaning towards the Ground Control/Koni Sport coil-over set up, but after some research, AST always comes up as a great choice for the E46. A little pricey at about $2K, but I'm thinking it would make a tremendous and welcome difference on my car's ailing suspension.SaveSave
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