Soooo I did a new suspension...

[AliasJerk]

Our story starts on Thursday, I am sitting in my comfy computer chair, when at 6:30 a big brown truck stops in front of my house and drops off a nice set of gold Bling

But where is my other box? I wounder, how much longer I might have to wait... until the next day, at the exact same time, another brown truck dropped off a nice set of these...


By this point my face looked a little like this :grin: as I had never owned a nice new suspension before, and not one like this by all means, I gave bill (starjammir from the Contour Enthusiest Group (CEG)) a call and said "they are here" We planned on meeting this saturday morning at 10am. I showed up with my backseat filled with my parts.

The front went very smoothly, everything installed without a hitch, we only spent about an hour and 15 minutes on the front, MAX.




Feeling really good we went straight for the back, in full force to only be presented with some problems... a lot of cursing toyota's name happened... But we werent about to give up.


Finally it all came apart, and went back together, beautifully.






I have never attempted anything this big before, so im really excited to have done such a big project, ask bill, I did a hell of a lot of the work, although I cant thank him enough for helping to figure out how to get the back done, he did the majority of that work. Even his dad lent us a little hand when we got stuck. All in all it only took us about 4 hours to do, which isnt bad for two monkeys tinkering around with a toyota...

Now my impression of the combination of Tein H.Tech springs and Tokico HB struts. Im very happy with it. The ride isnt dropped an ungodly amount to scream "WOAH CHECK OUT MY SLAMMED RIDE" but at the same time its still definately dropped. The car rides very well too, bumps were well absorbed and body roll and dip was minimized, I pretty much made a toyota version of the BAT kit, and I LOVE it. My first new suspension

[REN69]

Umm.. I'll give it a few weeks and see if they settle down then I'll pass my judgement, for now it still looks stock to me.

You sure you didn't get fake Teins?? I hear there's a lot of those going around.

Next step should be rims dude.. those wheel covers are not FTW.

[AliasJerk]

Originally Posted by REN69

Umm.. I'll give it a few weeks and see if they settle down then I'll pass my judgement, for now it still looks stock to me.

You sure you didn't get fake Teins?? I hear there's a lot of those going around.

Next step should be rims dude.. those wheel covers are not FTW.

RIms are going to happen next summer, no point in getting them and having to take them off in a couple of months when I go to college. The hubcaps dont look TOO bad, but I would like a nice set of 16 inch ASA EM9's with a Satin finnish. Its definately lower then stock, the front end dropped about 1.5 inches, my wheel gap in the front was attrocious before the new springs. I know they arent counterfiet teins, because the counterfiet ones are the S.Techs, I ordered the H.Techs. Plus the fake ones are selling on Ebay, I didnt order off of ebay. I went straight to the manufactorer on this one, they came stright from the tein factory. The H.Techs arent designed to lower all the much. I liked the drop it made the car look a lot better, and they have settled more overnight. I got a couple of looks last night downtown too.

[357wheelgunner]

Looks good, and I bet it feels better.

My first nice supsension setup is on my current car, it makes a world of difference even daily driving to work and back.

Grats!

Oh and please get some new wheels, the hubcaps take away from the sweet suspension setup.....

[AliasJerk]

Originally Posted by 357wheelgunner

Looks good, and I bet it feels better.

My first nice supsension setup is on my current car, it makes a world of difference even daily driving to work and back.

Grats!

Oh and please get some new wheels, the hubcaps take away from the sweet suspension setup.....

it feels awesome, but I know the hubcaps wreck the look of the car. Not much better then stock hubcaps (which are long gone). New rims come next summer.

[357wheelgunner]

I forgot to say how great it is that you did the work yourself, way too many people take their cars into the shop for a job like that. I swapped springs in my xRS 3 times now, all by myself in my driveway using all hand tools (no air or electriciity) and a bottle jack and stands. I learned a ton doing it, and it is more satisfying.

Forgot to ask....Did you get an alignment? You should do an alignment everytime you take your suspension apart. If you don't you can mess up your tires or worse. Should cost no more than $70 from a Toyota dealership.

Here's my XRS with the TRD springs and Koni Yellow shocks

[AliasJerk]

The alignment is actually still perfect, I had it checked they said it didnt need to be done. Although I had a bitch of a time with the rear sway bar endlinks... why the hell did toyota use TORX on the bolts? My old contour was 100x better for the sway bar endlinks, you put a wrench behind and in front and turned, poped off. That is one thing that this toyota has done to piss me off. But other then that the rest was pretty easy, we had air tools and rented spring compressors, so everything went quickly. I enjoyed doing this project with my friend, I did learn a lot about suspensions... I kind of want to get my own air compressor and impact wrench... Seems almost like a necessity to have.