Sunday 27 July 2014

Upgrading Suspension on the Mitsubishi

In preparation for our big trip I decided to upgrade the shock absorbers all around the car to Koni HT RAID suspension, which is some of the heaviest duty 4wd suspension available.  The coil springs were upgraded to Ironman 4x4 last year, which also gave the car a useful 50mm lift.

In doing this job I was surprised to find that the original Mitsubishi (KYB) shocks were actually still in good order after 73,000 miles. Nevertheless the job was worth doing, as the new shocks have huge oil reserves that allow them to keep from overheating in extreme conditions.  The Koni shocks are physically large - I can't even wrap my hands around the front shocks.

Starting with the front.  The upper control arms and ball joints had to be undone to get the strut out, but apart from some bolts that were a bit difficult to undo it was all quite straightforward really.


Passenger side strut removed.


The top strut mounts were hard to undo and difficult to reach - an unhelpful combination, but no problem with a breaker on an extension.


Both front struts removed from the car.  I decided not to remove the coil springs myself because this can be a dangerous job and one would want to have a very heavy duty set of spring compressors to do these.  Indeed the first mechanic I showed these struts just looked at them in amazement and said "what are these off - a tank".  He declined to do the job.  But eventually I found a mechanic with a heavy duty spring compressor machine and he removed the springs and assembled them onto the new Koni shocks.  Albeit he did it incorrectly the first time by not paying attention to aligning them to allow them to be installed on the car. This necessitated a return trip to him to correct, but then all was well and the newly assembled struts went in easily.


Below is the newly assembled red Koni installed on the passenger side.  Apprentice Beany also visible.


After a bit of a rest in the afternoon and visit to the gym we continued into the evening.  The photo below is our dinner break - pizza and coke.  We had completed the front earlier in the day and had moved onto the rear.  


Jacking the rear of the Mitsubishi up high enough to get the wheels off the ground is a bit freaky.  It has to be jacked a long way to get the wheels off the ground, it's a heavy vehicle and you need the flattest ground you can find or it feels scarily unstable.  I get the jack stands underneath as quickly as possible.

I couldn't finish the rear on the Saturday night owing to the new Koni's coming with a 22mm top nut - there was no room for a socket and I didn't have a spanner that big.  Another trip to Halfords was needed on Sunday morning to get the spanner.  Photo below shows the bright red new Koni shock installed in the rear.



I had to buy a new large torque wrench to do this job as some of the suspension mounting bolts were listed as high as 145NM of torque in the Mitsubishi workshop manual.  I know many home mechanics (and professional one's too) wouldn't go to the trouble of torquing everything back to factory specs, but I think it's good practice when reinstalling safety critical parts.


Finally the car was all back together and down off the jack stands.  Miss Micky Moo came out to inspect her trusty chariot.



Job done, but still a water tank system and heat exchanger shower to install before we depart in 2 to 3 weeks!

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