By popular demand, I am putting this writeup here. It is a copy of one I did earlier "somewhere else". I added a few comments at the end.
Warning, this is a really long post so be ready to spend some time, if you care about this stuff. Its long because it was pretty much two whole days of work. Even if you dont intend on doing it, I hope it is a good story.
Well, it's done; I got all the suspension bits installed. I did it in my driveway with ramps, jack, jackstands, and a good collection of tools. Would I recommend you try it? No, not unless you are crazy like me. This is not a how-to, it is more of a how-I-did-it. If you are crazy enough to try it, it might be worth reading through since there is some useful information scattered through it. Dont start on Sunday afternoon with a beer and a couple of friends and expect to knock it off in an hour or two. Also you better have a pretty good toolbox; mine is extensive, and it seemed like I used at least 1/3 of what I have.
I started on the rear on Saturday morning, expecting my son to come and help out with the front later. Up on jack stands, wheels off. I started by attempting to remove the plate in the middle, 4 17mm bolts. The very first bolt, and it wont come off. Ratchet, then box end-wrench and a dead-blow hammer, then breaker bar, then the impact wrench wont budge. Finally I got the propane torch and gave it a good warm-up and out it comes. The other three come out easy. I proceed to disassemble the shocks, springs and ARB, having to heat up the bottom shock bolts too to get them loose. My theory is that some very aggressive loctite is used and the heat softens it up.
Now, the camber links. Some brilliant Mazda engineer needed a place to put the gas tank evap test pump. He looked around and said theres a good place and put it on the rear sub-frame just in the way so you cant get the bolt for the right camber link out; and you also cant get at the bolt that holds the pump in place. So, you have to drop the entire rear sub-frame down so you can get at things. I put the jack under the sub-frame, pulled six big bolts, and dropped the frame down. Not too hard actually. Old camber links out, new ones in, evap pump back in place, sub-frame back in, all bolts loctited and torqued. Camber link bolts are torqued to 65 ft-lbs, sub-frame to 85.
Now the rear shocks. You have to remove the top mount from the old shocks and drill out the bushing in the center because the new shocks top bolt is bigger. This is easier said than done. The bushing in the middle is pretty hard, plus since it is rubber mounted it moves around when drilling. I used a high quality drill bit in the drill press with the mount in a vice. I lubricated the drill bit. Drilling was difficult with much heating, smoke and strange noises, but successful. The hole was a little ragged and needed deburring. Now the second one; same procedure, but I would guess the drill bit took a bit of gas on the first one. This one is even more difficult and suddenly there is a strange noise, a lurch, and the center bushing separates from the rubber! Damn it looks like I let it get too hot and the rubber melted! I start calling Mazda dealers to find a replacement. It turns out the mount is not a separate part, it is included with the shock. I have to buy a whole new shock to get the mount, and of course they have no stock. So, I decide I have to make something work. I finish drilling the hole in the now separated bushing, using a new drill bit. I then fiddle and get the bushing back into place in the torn rubber of the mount. It actually looks quite well contained; the way the mount is constructed, the bushing cant come out the bottom and there is enough rubber on the top to hold it quite securely. I am going to use it for now, and try to get a junk-yard shock to cannibalize the mount during the week. After driving it for two days, it still feels really solid, no noises so I am not going to panic about replacing it.
So, after assembling the shocks, adjusting the compression and rebound with the recommended initial settings, they go right in.
The springs are a tight fit on the bottom spring perch which has to turn to make adjustments. So I sanded off the paint on the inside of the bottom of each coil. Now it turns nicely. The springs go right in too, no problems. Then the ARB and bottom center plate go on. I left the end links loose at this point. I then installed the wheels (torqued of course). Now I put my ramps under the tires and pulled the jack stands. This sets the suspension at ride height. Then I torqued the ARB end links.
The rear is done, time for lunch.
My son shows up to help with the front. We are talking about how it is going and his beeper goes off he is a volunteer firefighter and apparently someone set several grass fires; so much for my helper.
I jacked up the front leaving the rear on the ramps to get maximum height. This required creativity as the jack wont fit under the front with the rear in the air. I jacked each side and put 2x6s under the tires, then I could get the jack under the front. Now set up the jack stands as high as they will go under the sills. Wheels off. Disassembled the ARB links, tie rod ends, and ABS sensors. To get the shocks disengaged at the bottom, you remove the pinch bolt and then are supposed to hammer away at the hub to get it apart. I dont like hammering on things so instead, I re-installed the pinch bolt from the opposite site with a piece of scrap steel in the slot. Tightening the bolt then spreads the clamp a bit making it loose enough to come off. I did bash at it a bit with a plastic mallet, but it came right off. Three bolts at the top of the shock and the entire spring and shock assembly comes out.
You have to re-use the top mount on the new shocks, so the first step is to compress the spring and undo the bolt on the top. Now with this loose, the instructions say to take off the top mount, but dont disassemble the bearing, but without a lot of description of how to do that. So I kinda pull this way and that way, and it comes off, with a shower of little ball bearings. Oops. I crawl around on the floor collecting all the balls and try to put it back together. After much screwing around I discover it doesnt really matter since the part you need is just the rubber bit above the bearing. You can get it apart by gently prying with a screwdriver just below the bottom of the triangular rubber flange of the mount. I assembled the front shocks, springs, bearings, and top mount, and adjusted to the recommended settings from the instructions. No spring compressor needed for assembly since you can compress the helper springs by hand. It is a pain to tighten the nut because the shaft just has some small flats on it and holding it while tightening the nut is tricky. Done for the day.
Next morning its time to tackle the front ARB. But, its raining!
Mid-morning the rain lets up enough so it is not too horrible, time to remove the front ARB. The first part is to drop the front sub-frame. First, remove a bolt from the rear transmission mount. Then put a jack under the center of the frame, remove four small bolts, two big bolts, and two huge bolts. Lower the jack slowly part way down and the sub-frame drops down. Even with the sub-frame dropped, it is not easy to get to the bolts on the ARB mounts. With the bolts out out, the bar is loose. Snaking the bar out between parts of the sub-frame, steering rack, power steering hoses, exhaust, etc. requires care. Snaking the new bar in is even more difficult because it is bigger. I tried as hard as I could, but managed to ding up the nice red paint in a few places. Grease up the bushings and install the caps and tighten down the bolts. A critical step here (which I didnt realize) is to install the caps slid back as far as they can go before tightening; they are slotted. I put them in centered. I then jacked the sub-frame back into position and lined it up, bolted, torqued, and loctited everything. The largest bolts are torqued to 115 ft-lb so you need a large torque wrench.
Now I started assembling the front shocks. I found that the cavity on the spindles where the shocks go had rusted some around the bottom so I cleaned it up with some sandpaper. Then put grease in the hole and the bottom of the shock to ease assembly and reduce future rusting. I bolted the shock mount to the fender, then raised the lower arm to engage the shock. Now I go to install the link that goes from the shock to the new ARB and find that the ARB will not go low enough to engage the link! There is interference between the ARB and a piece of the sub-frame. Thats why you have to put the ARB caps as far back as possible. So I spent the next hour trying to get a combination of sockets, extensions, ratchet, breaker bar, and torque wrench in to loosen the bolts on the caps, slide them back, and torqued back up, without dropping the sub-frame again. I finally succeeded, but there is still a bit of interference. I put a dab of grease there in case the suspension ever goes to that extension, but it probably will not unless the car is on a jack. I think this is a design flaw in the Hotchkis bar. By putting the jack under the ball joint I compressed the springs enough to be able to connect up the ARB links.
One thing I noticed is that the instructions for setting the preload/ride height are not accurate. I am not sure what the problem is, but I tried setting to the recommended 15mm adjustment, and even though the instructions say it could be as low as 9mm, there is no way because the adjustment ring hits the ABS sensor wire support right at 15mm. In fact, I think it ended up too low in the front and I am going to adjust it up a bit within a couple of days.
Doing this, I also made a couple of special tools for adjusting the damping. The front rebound is easily adjusted with a 2mm allen wrench; you can use the tool described below for the rear. The compression adjustment on the bottom requires a 4mm allen wrench, but you cant fit it in past the CV joint. So I bought a new 4mm wrench and cut about a quarter of an inch off the tip with a cut-off tool and cleaned it up. The rear compression on the bottom is adjusted with a pin which comes with the kit.
The rear rebound is adjusted with a 2mm allen, just like the front, except you cant even see it, much less reach it. I bought a 2mm ball-point allen wrench and cut off the short leg, leaving a straight hex with a ball on the end. I got a 10 length of 3/8 hard wood dowel and drilled a 1/16 hole in the end. I then hammered the allen wrench into the hole making a ball-point allen wrench with a 12 reach. To use this tool, you have to remove the plastic caps at the top of the rear wheel wells that house the rear seat belt reels. Near the back, there is a little plastic cover you can pry off to access a Philips head screw. Fold the back seats and you will see a plastic button fastener at the front. You can now disengage the plastic tabs by pulling the cap toward the center of the car. The cap will come off but still be around the seat belt, but that doesnt matter. Now remove the cover near the back of the trim that is used to access the tail lights and jack. Reach in the hole forward past your elbow and you should be able to just touch the top of the shock. Guide the tool from the top next to the seat belt reel and into the top of the shock. The adjustment turns quite easily and you can feel the clicks.
So, now its time to take my wife out for dinner and a movie to make up for the rest of the weekend. I get cleaned up and off we go. About 5 minutes away from the house, the CEL light goes on! The car is driving fine, a little bumpier that it used to, but corners on rails. I cant test it too hard because of the speed limiter in the other seat, but it is a clear improvement. But, that damn CEL! For the next three hours or so, I keep turning over in my mind what I could have left unconnected. After we get home I plug in the scanner and the code is P2006, intake runner flap. It has nothing to do with the suspension. I thought this was a cold weather problem and never expected to see it in California, even if it did sprinkle a bit, but this is August. I cleared it and will see if it comes back. Just a weird coincidence.
On Monday I drove it to work and back, taking some of my alternate routes and it is awesome. Corners flat and accurate, no understeer, no oversteer unless you get crazy, nicely balanced. I drove over some speed bumps I normally take at no more than 20, and find that at 30 the car just goes bump, none of the old up, over, bounce, jiggle. I love it.
Next tweak the ride height, then alignment, then playing with the shock adjustments.
******************************
After driving a bit, I backed off compression damping on both ends by two clicks. It is now a bit less jarring over large bumps. I also replaced the factory end links with AWR adjustable endlinks; I did this to make them a bit shorter in the front to reduce the interference with the frame, and the rear because my clunking came back and I may have damaged the stockers. No clunking any more.
Also, the CEL is cleared up by the recall.
Warning, this is a really long post so be ready to spend some time, if you care about this stuff. Its long because it was pretty much two whole days of work. Even if you dont intend on doing it, I hope it is a good story.
Well, it's done; I got all the suspension bits installed. I did it in my driveway with ramps, jack, jackstands, and a good collection of tools. Would I recommend you try it? No, not unless you are crazy like me. This is not a how-to, it is more of a how-I-did-it. If you are crazy enough to try it, it might be worth reading through since there is some useful information scattered through it. Dont start on Sunday afternoon with a beer and a couple of friends and expect to knock it off in an hour or two. Also you better have a pretty good toolbox; mine is extensive, and it seemed like I used at least 1/3 of what I have.
I started on the rear on Saturday morning, expecting my son to come and help out with the front later. Up on jack stands, wheels off. I started by attempting to remove the plate in the middle, 4 17mm bolts. The very first bolt, and it wont come off. Ratchet, then box end-wrench and a dead-blow hammer, then breaker bar, then the impact wrench wont budge. Finally I got the propane torch and gave it a good warm-up and out it comes. The other three come out easy. I proceed to disassemble the shocks, springs and ARB, having to heat up the bottom shock bolts too to get them loose. My theory is that some very aggressive loctite is used and the heat softens it up.
Now, the camber links. Some brilliant Mazda engineer needed a place to put the gas tank evap test pump. He looked around and said theres a good place and put it on the rear sub-frame just in the way so you cant get the bolt for the right camber link out; and you also cant get at the bolt that holds the pump in place. So, you have to drop the entire rear sub-frame down so you can get at things. I put the jack under the sub-frame, pulled six big bolts, and dropped the frame down. Not too hard actually. Old camber links out, new ones in, evap pump back in place, sub-frame back in, all bolts loctited and torqued. Camber link bolts are torqued to 65 ft-lbs, sub-frame to 85.
Now the rear shocks. You have to remove the top mount from the old shocks and drill out the bushing in the center because the new shocks top bolt is bigger. This is easier said than done. The bushing in the middle is pretty hard, plus since it is rubber mounted it moves around when drilling. I used a high quality drill bit in the drill press with the mount in a vice. I lubricated the drill bit. Drilling was difficult with much heating, smoke and strange noises, but successful. The hole was a little ragged and needed deburring. Now the second one; same procedure, but I would guess the drill bit took a bit of gas on the first one. This one is even more difficult and suddenly there is a strange noise, a lurch, and the center bushing separates from the rubber! Damn it looks like I let it get too hot and the rubber melted! I start calling Mazda dealers to find a replacement. It turns out the mount is not a separate part, it is included with the shock. I have to buy a whole new shock to get the mount, and of course they have no stock. So, I decide I have to make something work. I finish drilling the hole in the now separated bushing, using a new drill bit. I then fiddle and get the bushing back into place in the torn rubber of the mount. It actually looks quite well contained; the way the mount is constructed, the bushing cant come out the bottom and there is enough rubber on the top to hold it quite securely. I am going to use it for now, and try to get a junk-yard shock to cannibalize the mount during the week. After driving it for two days, it still feels really solid, no noises so I am not going to panic about replacing it.
So, after assembling the shocks, adjusting the compression and rebound with the recommended initial settings, they go right in.
The springs are a tight fit on the bottom spring perch which has to turn to make adjustments. So I sanded off the paint on the inside of the bottom of each coil. Now it turns nicely. The springs go right in too, no problems. Then the ARB and bottom center plate go on. I left the end links loose at this point. I then installed the wheels (torqued of course). Now I put my ramps under the tires and pulled the jack stands. This sets the suspension at ride height. Then I torqued the ARB end links.
The rear is done, time for lunch.
My son shows up to help with the front. We are talking about how it is going and his beeper goes off he is a volunteer firefighter and apparently someone set several grass fires; so much for my helper.
I jacked up the front leaving the rear on the ramps to get maximum height. This required creativity as the jack wont fit under the front with the rear in the air. I jacked each side and put 2x6s under the tires, then I could get the jack under the front. Now set up the jack stands as high as they will go under the sills. Wheels off. Disassembled the ARB links, tie rod ends, and ABS sensors. To get the shocks disengaged at the bottom, you remove the pinch bolt and then are supposed to hammer away at the hub to get it apart. I dont like hammering on things so instead, I re-installed the pinch bolt from the opposite site with a piece of scrap steel in the slot. Tightening the bolt then spreads the clamp a bit making it loose enough to come off. I did bash at it a bit with a plastic mallet, but it came right off. Three bolts at the top of the shock and the entire spring and shock assembly comes out.
You have to re-use the top mount on the new shocks, so the first step is to compress the spring and undo the bolt on the top. Now with this loose, the instructions say to take off the top mount, but dont disassemble the bearing, but without a lot of description of how to do that. So I kinda pull this way and that way, and it comes off, with a shower of little ball bearings. Oops. I crawl around on the floor collecting all the balls and try to put it back together. After much screwing around I discover it doesnt really matter since the part you need is just the rubber bit above the bearing. You can get it apart by gently prying with a screwdriver just below the bottom of the triangular rubber flange of the mount. I assembled the front shocks, springs, bearings, and top mount, and adjusted to the recommended settings from the instructions. No spring compressor needed for assembly since you can compress the helper springs by hand. It is a pain to tighten the nut because the shaft just has some small flats on it and holding it while tightening the nut is tricky. Done for the day.
Next morning its time to tackle the front ARB. But, its raining!
Mid-morning the rain lets up enough so it is not too horrible, time to remove the front ARB. The first part is to drop the front sub-frame. First, remove a bolt from the rear transmission mount. Then put a jack under the center of the frame, remove four small bolts, two big bolts, and two huge bolts. Lower the jack slowly part way down and the sub-frame drops down. Even with the sub-frame dropped, it is not easy to get to the bolts on the ARB mounts. With the bolts out out, the bar is loose. Snaking the bar out between parts of the sub-frame, steering rack, power steering hoses, exhaust, etc. requires care. Snaking the new bar in is even more difficult because it is bigger. I tried as hard as I could, but managed to ding up the nice red paint in a few places. Grease up the bushings and install the caps and tighten down the bolts. A critical step here (which I didnt realize) is to install the caps slid back as far as they can go before tightening; they are slotted. I put them in centered. I then jacked the sub-frame back into position and lined it up, bolted, torqued, and loctited everything. The largest bolts are torqued to 115 ft-lb so you need a large torque wrench.
Now I started assembling the front shocks. I found that the cavity on the spindles where the shocks go had rusted some around the bottom so I cleaned it up with some sandpaper. Then put grease in the hole and the bottom of the shock to ease assembly and reduce future rusting. I bolted the shock mount to the fender, then raised the lower arm to engage the shock. Now I go to install the link that goes from the shock to the new ARB and find that the ARB will not go low enough to engage the link! There is interference between the ARB and a piece of the sub-frame. Thats why you have to put the ARB caps as far back as possible. So I spent the next hour trying to get a combination of sockets, extensions, ratchet, breaker bar, and torque wrench in to loosen the bolts on the caps, slide them back, and torqued back up, without dropping the sub-frame again. I finally succeeded, but there is still a bit of interference. I put a dab of grease there in case the suspension ever goes to that extension, but it probably will not unless the car is on a jack. I think this is a design flaw in the Hotchkis bar. By putting the jack under the ball joint I compressed the springs enough to be able to connect up the ARB links.
One thing I noticed is that the instructions for setting the preload/ride height are not accurate. I am not sure what the problem is, but I tried setting to the recommended 15mm adjustment, and even though the instructions say it could be as low as 9mm, there is no way because the adjustment ring hits the ABS sensor wire support right at 15mm. In fact, I think it ended up too low in the front and I am going to adjust it up a bit within a couple of days.
Doing this, I also made a couple of special tools for adjusting the damping. The front rebound is easily adjusted with a 2mm allen wrench; you can use the tool described below for the rear. The compression adjustment on the bottom requires a 4mm allen wrench, but you cant fit it in past the CV joint. So I bought a new 4mm wrench and cut about a quarter of an inch off the tip with a cut-off tool and cleaned it up. The rear compression on the bottom is adjusted with a pin which comes with the kit.
The rear rebound is adjusted with a 2mm allen, just like the front, except you cant even see it, much less reach it. I bought a 2mm ball-point allen wrench and cut off the short leg, leaving a straight hex with a ball on the end. I got a 10 length of 3/8 hard wood dowel and drilled a 1/16 hole in the end. I then hammered the allen wrench into the hole making a ball-point allen wrench with a 12 reach. To use this tool, you have to remove the plastic caps at the top of the rear wheel wells that house the rear seat belt reels. Near the back, there is a little plastic cover you can pry off to access a Philips head screw. Fold the back seats and you will see a plastic button fastener at the front. You can now disengage the plastic tabs by pulling the cap toward the center of the car. The cap will come off but still be around the seat belt, but that doesnt matter. Now remove the cover near the back of the trim that is used to access the tail lights and jack. Reach in the hole forward past your elbow and you should be able to just touch the top of the shock. Guide the tool from the top next to the seat belt reel and into the top of the shock. The adjustment turns quite easily and you can feel the clicks.
So, now its time to take my wife out for dinner and a movie to make up for the rest of the weekend. I get cleaned up and off we go. About 5 minutes away from the house, the CEL light goes on! The car is driving fine, a little bumpier that it used to, but corners on rails. I cant test it too hard because of the speed limiter in the other seat, but it is a clear improvement. But, that damn CEL! For the next three hours or so, I keep turning over in my mind what I could have left unconnected. After we get home I plug in the scanner and the code is P2006, intake runner flap. It has nothing to do with the suspension. I thought this was a cold weather problem and never expected to see it in California, even if it did sprinkle a bit, but this is August. I cleared it and will see if it comes back. Just a weird coincidence.
On Monday I drove it to work and back, taking some of my alternate routes and it is awesome. Corners flat and accurate, no understeer, no oversteer unless you get crazy, nicely balanced. I drove over some speed bumps I normally take at no more than 20, and find that at 30 the car just goes bump, none of the old up, over, bounce, jiggle. I love it.
Next tweak the ride height, then alignment, then playing with the shock adjustments.
******************************
After driving a bit, I backed off compression damping on both ends by two clicks. It is now a bit less jarring over large bumps. I also replaced the factory end links with AWR adjustable endlinks; I did this to make them a bit shorter in the front to reduce the interference with the frame, and the rear because my clunking came back and I may have damaged the stockers. No clunking any more.
Also, the CEL is cleared up by the recall.
