Suspension

Shock Absorbers

My car came with Bilstein shock absorbers fitted. These weigh 4.0Kg. These were in pretty poor condition but have been tidied up as we removed the shock absorbers to replace the rubber boots and bumps stops.

The paint colour used on the Bilstein shock absorbers is Caterpillar Yellow (sometimes referred to as Old Yellow), Euroscale (CMYK): 0/10/100/0, Pantone: 109, HKS: 3, RGB: 255/220/0, RAL: 1018. Hammerite Smooth Yellow is a good match apparently.

Shock Absorber Boots

My car came with shock absorber boots that were in pieces, so I bought new ones to fit. These also have an integrated bump stop. According to the paperwork that came with the car, these were last changed in August 2011.

Shock Absorber Lower Bushes

When we removed the shock absorbers it was clear the lower bushes were badly distorted and needed to be replaced.

Bilstein don't sell these bushes on their website, though they can be phoned to supply them. They are a lot more expensive in the UK than over in the USA, where each bush is just a few dollars. The obvious thing to do is replaced them with uprated poly bushes but, these are far from maintenance free and I question the value of them in this application.

September 2016 - Phoned Bilstein (0116 2898345) and ordered some new lower bushes for the shock absorbers. These worked out at £6.21 + VAT each.

Bilstein shipped me these standard bushes (26th Oct 2016) to fit into my shock absorbers.

Springs

My car seems have stiffer 'sports' springs fitted to it. The ride is too firm for the road and there is very little body roll. It is just about perfect for the track though.

Front Anti-Roll Bar

As part of my tidying up, I removed the brackets for the anti-roll bar and cleaned and painted them up. The links and bushes looked to be in good condition, so I left them in place. Undoing the link bolts was hard work though.

The front ARB bush bracket bolts are torqued to 18-26Nm.

The front ARB link bolts are torqued to 36 to 54Nm.

Rear Anti-Roll Bar

This is the rear anti-roll bar removed, ready to be cleaned up and repainted. The drop link bolts were a nightmare to undo. Used a spanner extension bar and a breaker bar in the end to get them undone.

This is the rear anti-roll bar cleaned up and painted. Also did the brackets, bolts and nuts. The bushes looked fine.

Bushes

As part of the suspension refurbishment, I was going to look at replacing the rubber bushes but my investigations showed them to be in good condition.

Strut Brace

My Eunos came with a GAB strut brace already fitted.