I need help please! I have a 4th gen Sport(with Xreas) and I cant get this revtek kit in its position. First of all Im not sure if you are supposed to get rid of the rubber piece which used to protect the top plate bolts. And how do you get the bottem of the strut assembly back in? when we got the top in and got the nuts on loosly, we would then jack the upper a-arm down to get the bottem of the strut in its place but as we jacked down on that it pushed down on the spring compressor there for pushing the strut down as well.

My Question is- after you get the top bolts in, do you decopress the spring and then try to get the strut in on the bottom?

2- how does the line up of the new kit go, I dont understand.

 

SnowRunner-
I'll do my best here. First of all, retain that rubber piece. It essentially acts as an isolator between the steel. You will re-insert it into the setup with the revtek spacers. As far as getting the bottom part of the strut back into place, you are taking the correct approach of securing the top first. To be honest with you, I have had the front end of my 4th gen apart near 10 times now, and never once used a spring compressor to get the coilover back into place. If you pop the ball joint where the top of the spindle attaches to the upper control arm, you will gain a good amount of room to work, substaintial enough to get the strut to its resting spot with some leverage. I am gonna search thru my archives for some pics that should help you. Hopefully others will chime in. Be sure to have the sway bar disconnected from where it attaches to the spindle during install as well.

The rubber piece comes back into play as it is inserted between the lower revtek spacer and the coil.

Billy

 

The third pic down on this link should help you see the stack.

http://www.anthonykrueger.com/221liftrunner.htm

Click on that or paste it into your address bar...I kept getting an error message when creating the hyperlink.

Billy

 

Billy- Should the spring be compessed or decopressed when putting the bottom back in?

 

Lots of rigs have been lifted with XREAS. Do a search under 4runner lift XREAS and you should find at least 2 writeups. One by Bulldgo, and one by 4route. I lifted mine iwth XREAS and had no problem.

 

I have never compressed the coil spring. Like Biff said though, just run a search and you will get all your questions answered.

Good Luck.

Billy

 

snowrunner- do not know if the xreas would make a diff, but we just muscled the strut in -- one person turning the brake assembly out of the way, and at the same time pushing down to extend the a-arm all the way down, and i simply muscled the strut into its housing. once it was in i used a punch to line up the holes and popped the bolt in.

i did not put the rubber spacer back in -- rev-tek's instructions said to discard -- but when i install new a-arms i will be putting these back in so i agree to put the rubber spacers back in between the rev-tek spacer and coil.

 

ahriman- when you put the bottom in, was the spring compressed or decompressed?

 

decompressed - i did not trust those things to stay on when muscling things around down there. one bump and there goes your teeth, along w/your lower jaw...

 

ahriman- but if it is decomressed, doesnt it extend the strut even further making it near impossibe to get the strut in its position?

 

yep, when i say muscled, i MEAN muscled...
another thing to try is shoe-horning it in w/a prybar, or using a bottlejack to push it up-n-in

question, are your a-arms free? where do you have your jackstands (should be under framerail, not a-arm)? if you can post a pic, that would help also.

 

muscled? oh come on, boys ... you got a girl here who found that part e-a-s-y!

also, SnowRunner, I just sent you an email.

no, you cannot reinstall the strut with the spring compressed, and trying it that way would make it about 400 times more difficult.

 

Here are the write ups:

http://www.ezdries.net/html/daystar_lift.html
http://box.ixolo.com/revtek.html

Enjoy!

For more into, just visit the two links above as they both have great write ups!

Good luck

Btw, the easiest way would be to use a tie rod puller and remove the upper a-arm ball joint as well as the ball joint on the steering. Once those are removed, reinstalling the shock assembly will be EASY. This will not require any "muscled" work

 

I emailed you back, I think I know what you are talking about, and I think I can help you out some. First of all, decompress the coil. If you take a look at the strut you will see that the xreas line attaches near the bottom and is uneffected by the coil, so compression or decompression does not change the position or stretch of the xreas line. You will have a great deal more success once you get those bulky compressors out of the way.

 

thank everyone I am going to try it in about an hour and as soon as i do i will get back to you. thank you

 

Hey man, I hope I helped some ... but you'll do just fine when you try it again. If you have any questions or get held up at any part, just give me a call again and I'll try to help, but I really think that once you take the compressors off, you'll get the strut in without any problem. You said you took the spacers out and reinstalled everything ... well, to install the strut with the spacers, you just do the exact same thing (since you have already reinstalled the struts without the spacer for tonight) with a little more jacking down on the upper a-arm. From what you told me, you are very far along in the installation, and all I can think of that you need to do is to take those compressors off after you install the spacers.

Good luck, Andrew!

(don't hesitate to call if you need anything though)

 

me neanderthal lifter, me muscle, ugh grunt

 

me u.h.o.m. ... grunt.