Hi,

I know this is a novelty question, but I was wondering how far you need to compress the coil spring. From all the diagrams I have looked at, a correctly compressed coil spring has its upper seat pulled away from the suspension support a couple of inches. I've already compressed the coil spring spring quit a bit, but the seat has yet to pull away from the support. I positioned the compressors correctly, although I could have put the top compressor a little higher on the top coil.

In compressing the coil spring, is the idea simply to take enough of the load off the suspension support to get it off, or does the seat need to pull away from the support? I'm starting to wonder if there's something wrong with the strut. I started the project because the upper insulator got tangled (really not sure how that would happen) and needs to be replaced.

Obviously, I'm not the most experienced home mechanic, so any help would be appreciated. If it would be of aid, I could probably post some pictures of my progress so far.

Thanks.

 

the point of compressing the spring, is so it does not shoot off and hit someone when you take it off of the assembly. you compress the springs after you take it off the car.

 

Exactly. Consider, if you will, most road going car springs take 200-300lbs to compress one inch, and they are pre-compressed several inches just to install/uninstall on the car. All those stories of "Ya well I had my strut/spring sort of assempled on the table & my dumb nuts friend knocked it off the tabel & the spring shot off & blew a hole in the roof".


Ya that actually does happen from time to time.

 

LOL i actually got lazy once and did not compress the spring....lemme tell you that was a pretty scary experiment.....