Ahh, Luna. Our trusty 2001 Toyota RAV4. She's been awesome. Earlier this year, J and I replaced the front brakes. I still have to get to the rear ones, but haven't felt like it because they're sort of stupid. Meaning, they're drum brakes. A little more complicated than caliper brakes. Eventually, I will have to replace them. Other than that, however, we haven't done much to our little offroad vehicle. She's a Toyota, after all, so she just works.
However, her suspension has been hurting. The guy at Costco mentioned it to us the last time we swapped out her all seasons for winter tires. So I decided to take a stab at replacing the front struts and rear shocks. In the end, the job was really simple. Actually easier than doing brakes, even caliper ones.
After reading about the pros and cons of full strut assemblies (more expensive, lower quality springs) vs. keeping all the stock equipment and only replacing the shocks (less expensive, original springs don't wear out), I ended up going the latter route. It would end up complicating things, but ultimately I still think it was the better way to go.
I scored a set of KYB front and rear shocks on shocksurplus.com for $235. They arrived in just a few days. Time to get to work.
Up went her rear end and off came her wheels.
I used her scissor jack to lift up the rear hub and get the weight off the shock while loosening the 19mm nut at the bottom and the 14mm nuts in the cargo area.
K had to come out and hold the shock from below and keep it from spinning while I loosened the 14mm nuts. Pretty sure the shocks I removed were original.
It was then a simple matter of reversing those few steps. The lower shock mounting bolt called for torquing to 27 ft-lbs. Easy peasy. The lugnuts were 76 ft-lbs. With that, the rear end was done.
Wow, that really was easy. It took me longer to get out the tools I needed and jack up the car. Ok, now for the front. Up again went Luna and off came her feet. There were a total of four bolts I needed to remove around her axle:
- (2) 19mm nuts holding the strut assembly
- 12mm nut holding the brake cable
- 14mm + 6mm hex holding the stabilizer bar
That last one required holding the screw with the hex socket while loosening the nut with a ratcheting wrench.
Still, super easy. Then, under the hood, there were three 14mm nuts holding the strut mount in place. I had caught a good tip in
this Chris Fix video where he mentioned drawing around the nuts with a Sharpie. Why? Because then I'd be able to keep the alignment pretty close to the way it was. Turns out, on the RAV4 the bolts don't really move around much so it was moot. Still, a good tip.
As I loosened up the third nut, I reached under and into the wheel well to hold onto the strut. Then it was out.
Here is the entire strut assembly and the lone shock that I needed to replace.
This is where things got interesting. Basically, the springs in a strut assembly are under tension. A lot of tension. So they have quite a bit of dangerous potential energy all stored up with nowhere to go. That's why there are lots of various compressors designed to push the springs together, release the tension, and make it simple to pull out the old shock and insert the new one. And manufacturers have come out with those all-in-one strut assemblies.
Conveniently, AutoZone rents these sorts of one-time use tools for free. So I picked up a
McPherson compressor and gave it a shot. I quickly discovered a problem: since the RAV4 springs only have two coils that can be compressed, there was no way to release enough tension. Bummer. Back to the drawing board.
Well, with a little more research, I came across this beast: The
PowerBuilt Strut Coil Compressor. It looked like this thing would be able to fit over the top cap and do what the little McPherson couldn't. I picked one up today and went back home, excited to get Luna all fixed up.
Except the compressor was broke. It wouldn't open, not with an impact wrench, not with an 18-inch breaker bar. I took it back to the friendly guys at AutoZone who all, collectively, shrugged their shoulders at my and their poor PowerBuilt's conundrum. None of them had ever used one before.
Frustrated, I knew I had to give in. There was only one option left, so I picked up the phone. Thankfully, Ty at Les Schwab said he could shove Luna's two struts into their ginormous compressor and swap out the shocks for $34 each. Not bad. He had them done in under half an hour, enough time for me to finally finish up this job.
It took less than half an hour to get both of them reinstalled.
All in all, spring compressors aside, replacing the shocks and struts really was simple and straightforward. Which is good, because I have to do the same job on our Mazda 5 and our Sprinter van. Good times.
