Rear Suspension:

Now we move on to the rear. After safely raising the car, removing the wheels, spray all visible and invisible nuts with your favorite penetrant, and start working. Remove the nut and bolt on the lower shock mount, and the nuts and bolts which hold the rear sway bar to the subframe. This will allow you to droop the rear control arm enough to pull the shock out.


Loosen all inner control arm pivot bolts, which are a combination of 18mm heads on the bottom and 16mm on the top. Remove the nut and bolt from the outer UPPER control arm (it's hiding behind the brake's stone sheild, and is 18mm on both ends). this will allow the upper arm to flip up out of the way when removing the shock. You will re-torque these nuts with teh suspension under load, just like on the front end.

(In the following images, which are placeholders for the purpose of this article, you'll see that the bolts are removed from the lower arm. You do NOT need to remove these.)




Remove the lower shock bolt, and the 2 bolts that attach the upper shock mount to the body of the car, and push it down enough to pull the top of the shock assembly out of the upper mount cavity. DO NOT over do it, as you will stretch the rubber brake hose, and risk damaging it.



Once you have the shock assembly out of the car, you need to disassemble it. Use your spring compressors, and remove the top nut. You'll reuse the top and bottom spring seats, and the bump stop.

Specifically to Koni shocks, you have to be exceedingly carful when installing the lower spring perch. There is a very shallow groove cut into one side of the flat disc. This needs to sit over the C clip on the shock body in order to keep the clip from popping out of the slot in the shock body.



Once you've assembled the shock unit, re-insert it into the car,
torque all of the fasteners you loosened, put the car's weight onto
the suspension while you torque all bonded rubber bushings.
Again, the reason for this is, the bushings can only twist so far, it's possible to have the bushigs twisted beyond their normal travel when you lower the car, and then drive it.

Overall, I really like the way the car drives. It's very flat, no squat or dive, and it takes the bigger bumps very well. The only gripe I have, and it's a small gripe, the car follows every dip and ripple in the road, so there is a lot of up/down activity on bumpy roads.

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