 |
| Before (and looking rather sad) |
 |
| After. Not a huge difference, but definitely feels better. |
Friday, 15 June 2012
Suspension Before & After
Just a quick post to show a couple of pictures of the car before and after the suspension was lowered.
I'll chuck some more updates in once the BTCC decals arrive and the boot spoiler is installed.
Monday, 11 June 2012
Slammed Suspension Set-up
Here's the latest instalment of the preparation for the Chronicle Rally. Yesterday, I took the car to my friend and team mate's workshop in Coventry (about 25 miles away) to fit some 40mm lowering springs I had acquired for the car. For those viewing this blog as a 'how to' resource, I guess you could classify this as a how to lower the suspension on a Volvo 850 or how to replace the front and rear suspension springs on a Volvo 850.
Shameless search engine plug out of the way, here's the meat!
First up, the car goes up in the air. I really need to get hold of one of these hydraulic car ramps; they don't half make life easier! This is a good opportunity to take a decent look at the state of affairs underneath the car, so we give all the nuts & bolts we intend to undo a good scrub with a wire brush and a liberal spray with penetrating oil.
While the oil is soaking in, we give everything a good yank to make sure it's all tied together right and we give the exhaust a good thump to make sure the baffles are still solid. It's also an opportunity to check for any rust or any fluids that shouldn't be there. The underside of the engine is completely dry, which is a good sign for an 18 year old car with about 160,000 on the clock*. All the seals/gaskets are healthy.
* I say "about 160,000" because I'm not entirely sure how many miles the car has done. The odometer reads 151,950 but I've gone through nearly three tanks of fuel since taking that reading and it's still the same! I reckon that's close to 1,000 miles, but I don't know how long the odometer has been broken. It's at least 153,000 miles, but probably many more.
Everything looks good, the (original) exhaust is solid, there's no rust, no damage, no fluids, so we proceed with the task at hand.
We start on the front, as this is the bigger job to get out of the way, so off come the front wheels. Hopefully you know how to do this, so I didn't bother taking any pictures or writing a procedure for it.
What? You want to know? Er, okay. Just undo the five bolts holding each wheel on and pull towards you. Righty tighty, lefty loosey!
Okay, wheel off, we can now get down to business. First, remove the nut from the bracket on the strut just above the brake disc. This is the end of the anti-roll bar.
Next, further down the strut, there are two bolts holding the shock absorber (that's a damper to you Yanks) to the hub. These need to come out.
Once these bolts are out, the only thing truly holding the strut in place is the top plate that bolts through the inner wing. So down comes the ramp, up comes the bonnet and out comes the air gun (I want one of these as well, but that also means acquiring a compressor - slightly outside my budget at the moment!)
There are 3 nuts securing each strut through the inner wing. We remove two nuts and put them somewhere safe (preferably not on the plastic housing beneath the windscreen, as there are some lovely drainage holes to lose them down!) but only loosen the third - we don't want the strut falling out at this stage, as it could pull the drive shaft out and put is in a whole world of hurt!
The car goes back up in the air; not too high, as we still need to be able to reach that last nut. We bring in a stand to support the wheel; just something placed under the brake disc to take the strain.
Disconnect the ABS sensor from the back of the hub. This helps the strut pull clear once loose. Now the third nut can be removed from the top mount, the ARB pulled clear and the strut pulled off the hub. Depending on the age, corrosion, etc. the strut might need quite a yank to free it from the hub, but it should just fall through the inner wing at the top.
Voilà! The strut is out. Now all we need to do is remove the spring, replace with the new one, shove it back in and put it all back together.
With the strut on the bench, use some correction fluid (Tip-Ex et al) or a marker pen to mark up how all the components align. This is very important, as you won't know how to put it back together correctly otherwise!
Everything marked up, chuck the whole lot in a spring compressor (I think I just need an entire workshop...) and wind it up until the spring becomes loose from its top and bottom mountings. Don't worry too much if the rubber dust shield gets pulled away in the process, just remember to reattach it before putting the strut back on the car. It is a fiddly job, but not too bad.
At the top of the strut there is a nut holding the top mount assembly together. Undo this, remove what you can (remembering what order/orientation everything was in) and a new four-leaf clover shaped nut will be revealed. Undo this as well (you may need some mole grips on the centre shaft to stop the whole lot spinning when you try to undo this) and the whole strut should pull through the bottom of the spring. Please remember what order everything came off in. I know I've already said that, but it's important!
Now the strut is out, slowly unwind the spring compressor until the spring comes loose. Lift the old spring out and compare it with the new spring to decide on orientation. On the 850, the bottom of the spring turns in ever so slightly at the end of the last coil. Drop the new spring into the compressor and wind it up just enough to hold the spring firmly in place, then offer up the strut. Pull the strut through as far as it will go (the shocker should extend quite a bit with a little persuasion) then continue winding up the spring compressor until you can get the top mount components back on.
Loosely refit the top of the strut, then make sure everything is aligned with your earlier markings. Once everything's aligned and feels securely in place, tighten it all up and unwind the compressor until you can lift the assemblage out again.
As the book of lies tells us, replacement is the reverse of removal. The only thing I'd add is a suggestion to cover all of the bolts in copper grease to ensure they are nice & easy to get off at a later date if required. Otherwise, replacement really is quite straight forward and should occur more easily than removal due to all the nicely freed up parts.
That's the front essentially done, so time to move on to the rear.
Leave the wheels on!
Seriously, the rear end is a much easier affair. You can leave the wheels on; in fact, you will want them left on. You'll see why shortly.
Up the ramp goes again, high enough so we can easily get underneath the car.
Once under the rear, the suspension set-up is quite clear to see and it's simple. Some might say basic. The rear springs reside in cups on the end of what is essentially a trailing arm. Just forward of these cups are the shock absorbers, the bottom of which attaches to the aforementioned arm by a single nut. This is the first task; undo this nut, then pull the shocker away from the frame.
Next up, there is a nut in the centre of each cup - underneath. This nut needs to be removed to release an inner cup that clamps the spring down. Now, this is where we came a little unstuck on my car. The off-side nut came out without too much persuasion, but the nearside one didn't seem to want to cooperate. Worse than that, the thread it attaches to seemed to be pressed into the 'sub-cup' and the pressing was simply turning independently of the rest of the assemblage.
A couple of spot welds later and all's fine!
Once the nuts are removed, we need to get the 'sub-cups' out of the way. We don't want the pinging off when we pull the springs out, but they unfortunately have to come out between the coils of the spring. With a bit of fiddling, the will force through.
We actually missed this part out, but I'm going to write it here so you don't forget about it. Get your Tip-Ex/marker pen out again and mark the locations of the rubber mounts at the tops of the springs. It might not matter, but it's always best to put things back where you found them, especially when they've had 18 years and 160,000 miles to settle into that location!
Now comes the fun part. Find your two fattest friends and ask them to hang off the rear wheels. I'm not kidding! With the shocks detached, the weight of about 100kg hanging off each wheel will be enough to release the tension on the springs so they can simply be popped out! This is why you don't want to remove the wheels; brake discs aren't as comfortable to dangle off!
Compare the old & new springs again to determine orientation, then pop the rubbers into the top of the new springs and commence operation Monkey Dangle again. Insert the new springs, slip the 'sub-cups' back in and tighten the troublesome nuts back up.
Lastly, the shocks need hooking back up. This might require a little assistance from those stands we used to support the front wheels earlier. Just give them a bit of a lift until the hole lines up, then just pop the end of the shocker on and tighten up the nut.
After putting everything back together, it's a good idea to to a tracking & alignment check. We didn't think this would have changed much and only really checked it because the equipment was to hand. It was way off! I'm afraid I didn't document this part, but a little fettling behind the front wheels soon straightened everything out.
And there you have it. Replacing the suspension springs on a Volvo 850 is as easy as that!
I'll try to get some before & after pics added here at some point. I've got a before, but didn't get a chance to snap an after.
One thing to note, the ABS warning light came on after all of our fiddling near brakes. I was worried about this, but as soon as I started driving the car the light went out. The pump always primes the first time you hit 10mph, so I guess the system just does some diagnostics at that point as well and decided everything was okay.
Another update to the story, too small for its own post:
While up on the ramp, we also used the opportunity to do an oil & filter change, so that's another job out of the way.
We've had rather a lot of rain here recently (actually, it's been the wettest & coldest June I can remember!) and I've noticed that the driver's windscreen wiper wasn't clearing the screen at the top two or three inches of its arc. No biggie, but I wanted to sort it. Having stopped the wiper at the top of its arc, I could see it wasn't just not clearing the water, it was completely missing the screen!
While the car was in the workshop, we tried a few spare wipers Pav had lying around. No joy. Turns out it was the actual wiper arm. Somehow, while the car had been stood, the arm had 'adjusted' itself so that it was nowhere near the windscreen at the top of its sweep. That's in inverted commas because there is no adjustment! We couldn't figure out how it had got like that, so we turned to brute force & ignorance and simply bent the upper part of the arm to put it closer to the screen. It's a bit banana shaped now, but it does the job and that's good enough for me!
Lastly, we read out the ECU codes again, noted them down, then reset them all. This has extinguished the Lambda light again and it hasn't come on since (so far). My next job is to try to work out exactly what these codes mean, as the documentation I acquired from the Internet seems to be lying...
Thanks to my team mates Pawel Dabrowski for the use of the workshop, the welding, the replacement wiper and his time, and Matthew Weller for his Volvo experience which amounts to an inside-out knowledge of the 850!
Also thanks to everyone following this blog. I hope you find it entertaining, interesting and/or informative. Please stay tuned for more!
Shameless search engine plug out of the way, here's the meat!
First up, the car goes up in the air. I really need to get hold of one of these hydraulic car ramps; they don't half make life easier! This is a good opportunity to take a decent look at the state of affairs underneath the car, so we give all the nuts & bolts we intend to undo a good scrub with a wire brush and a liberal spray with penetrating oil.
While the oil is soaking in, we give everything a good yank to make sure it's all tied together right and we give the exhaust a good thump to make sure the baffles are still solid. It's also an opportunity to check for any rust or any fluids that shouldn't be there. The underside of the engine is completely dry, which is a good sign for an 18 year old car with about 160,000 on the clock*. All the seals/gaskets are healthy.
* I say "about 160,000" because I'm not entirely sure how many miles the car has done. The odometer reads 151,950 but I've gone through nearly three tanks of fuel since taking that reading and it's still the same! I reckon that's close to 1,000 miles, but I don't know how long the odometer has been broken. It's at least 153,000 miles, but probably many more.
Everything looks good, the (original) exhaust is solid, there's no rust, no damage, no fluids, so we proceed with the task at hand.
We start on the front, as this is the bigger job to get out of the way, so off come the front wheels. Hopefully you know how to do this, so I didn't bother taking any pictures or writing a procedure for it.
What? You want to know? Er, okay. Just undo the five bolts holding each wheel on and pull towards you. Righty tighty, lefty loosey!
Okay, wheel off, we can now get down to business. First, remove the nut from the bracket on the strut just above the brake disc. This is the end of the anti-roll bar.Next, further down the strut, there are two bolts holding the shock absorber (that's a damper to you Yanks) to the hub. These need to come out.
Once these bolts are out, the only thing truly holding the strut in place is the top plate that bolts through the inner wing. So down comes the ramp, up comes the bonnet and out comes the air gun (I want one of these as well, but that also means acquiring a compressor - slightly outside my budget at the moment!)
 |
| Top mount, inner wing |
The car goes back up in the air; not too high, as we still need to be able to reach that last nut. We bring in a stand to support the wheel; just something placed under the brake disc to take the strain.
 |
| Missing: One suspension strut. If found, replace with lowered spring and reattach. |
Voilà! The strut is out. Now all we need to do is remove the spring, replace with the new one, shove it back in and put it all back together.
With the strut on the bench, use some correction fluid (Tip-Ex et al) or a marker pen to mark up how all the components align. This is very important, as you won't know how to put it back together correctly otherwise!
Everything marked up, chuck the whole lot in a spring compressor (I think I just need an entire workshop...) and wind it up until the spring becomes loose from its top and bottom mountings. Don't worry too much if the rubber dust shield gets pulled away in the process, just remember to reattach it before putting the strut back on the car. It is a fiddly job, but not too bad.
 |
| Blurry-cam says "Feeling depressed? Fear not, you'll soon spring back!" |
At the top of the strut there is a nut holding the top mount assembly together. Undo this, remove what you can (remembering what order/orientation everything was in) and a new four-leaf clover shaped nut will be revealed. Undo this as well (you may need some mole grips on the centre shaft to stop the whole lot spinning when you try to undo this) and the whole strut should pull through the bottom of the spring. Please remember what order everything came off in. I know I've already said that, but it's important!
Now the strut is out, slowly unwind the spring compressor until the spring comes loose. Lift the old spring out and compare it with the new spring to decide on orientation. On the 850, the bottom of the spring turns in ever so slightly at the end of the last coil. Drop the new spring into the compressor and wind it up just enough to hold the spring firmly in place, then offer up the strut. Pull the strut through as far as it will go (the shocker should extend quite a bit with a little persuasion) then continue winding up the spring compressor until you can get the top mount components back on.
Loosely refit the top of the strut, then make sure everything is aligned with your earlier markings. Once everything's aligned and feels securely in place, tighten it all up and unwind the compressor until you can lift the assemblage out again.
 |
| Job jobbed. |
 |
| Just for comparison. |
Leave the wheels on!
Seriously, the rear end is a much easier affair. You can leave the wheels on; in fact, you will want them left on. You'll see why shortly.
Up the ramp goes again, high enough so we can easily get underneath the car.
Once under the rear, the suspension set-up is quite clear to see and it's simple. Some might say basic. The rear springs reside in cups on the end of what is essentially a trailing arm. Just forward of these cups are the shock absorbers, the bottom of which attaches to the aforementioned arm by a single nut. This is the first task; undo this nut, then pull the shocker away from the frame.
 |
| Spring cup and shock mount. |
A couple of spot welds later and all's fine!
Once the nuts are removed, we need to get the 'sub-cups' out of the way. We don't want the pinging off when we pull the springs out, but they unfortunately have to come out between the coils of the spring. With a bit of fiddling, the will force through.
We actually missed this part out, but I'm going to write it here so you don't forget about it. Get your Tip-Ex/marker pen out again and mark the locations of the rubber mounts at the tops of the springs. It might not matter, but it's always best to put things back where you found them, especially when they've had 18 years and 160,000 miles to settle into that location!
 |
| Reassembled Rear. |
Compare the old & new springs again to determine orientation, then pop the rubbers into the top of the new springs and commence operation Monkey Dangle again. Insert the new springs, slip the 'sub-cups' back in and tighten the troublesome nuts back up.
Lastly, the shocks need hooking back up. This might require a little assistance from those stands we used to support the front wheels earlier. Just give them a bit of a lift until the hole lines up, then just pop the end of the shocker on and tighten up the nut.
After putting everything back together, it's a good idea to to a tracking & alignment check. We didn't think this would have changed much and only really checked it because the equipment was to hand. It was way off! I'm afraid I didn't document this part, but a little fettling behind the front wheels soon straightened everything out.
And there you have it. Replacing the suspension springs on a Volvo 850 is as easy as that!
I'll try to get some before & after pics added here at some point. I've got a before, but didn't get a chance to snap an after.
One thing to note, the ABS warning light came on after all of our fiddling near brakes. I was worried about this, but as soon as I started driving the car the light went out. The pump always primes the first time you hit 10mph, so I guess the system just does some diagnostics at that point as well and decided everything was okay.
Another update to the story, too small for its own post:
While up on the ramp, we also used the opportunity to do an oil & filter change, so that's another job out of the way.
 |
| That's not a reflection of the box... |
While the car was in the workshop, we tried a few spare wipers Pav had lying around. No joy. Turns out it was the actual wiper arm. Somehow, while the car had been stood, the arm had 'adjusted' itself so that it was nowhere near the windscreen at the top of its sweep. That's in inverted commas because there is no adjustment! We couldn't figure out how it had got like that, so we turned to brute force & ignorance and simply bent the upper part of the arm to put it closer to the screen. It's a bit banana shaped now, but it does the job and that's good enough for me!
Lastly, we read out the ECU codes again, noted them down, then reset them all. This has extinguished the Lambda light again and it hasn't come on since (so far). My next job is to try to work out exactly what these codes mean, as the documentation I acquired from the Internet seems to be lying...
Thanks to my team mates Pawel Dabrowski for the use of the workshop, the welding, the replacement wiper and his time, and Matthew Weller for his Volvo experience which amounts to an inside-out knowledge of the 850!
Also thanks to everyone following this blog. I hope you find it entertaining, interesting and/or informative. Please stay tuned for more!
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