I did a search on this but it gave me back 247 posts worth of unrelated stuff, so I hope this hasn't been already asked, but....

I've got a set of the Raceland Coilovers. This set has height and locking rings that only have a scant few notches that the spanners can latch on to, unlike say the Tien which have like 20, making small turns harder with Racelands, particularly in raising the height.

So my idea was to use a spring compressor while the coilovers are installed on the car (taking them off to adjust is a major pain), so as to free up pressure on the height ring, thus making adjustment easier.

Can this be done? Are there any ill effects to doing adjustment this way? Are there any other suggestions as to how to make the height adjustment easier, particularly on the rears where there is more junk in the way?

I'm relatively new to suspensions and so this set of coils was my first suspension work ever.

 

If you jack your car up, there's almost no pressure on them. They are a total pain to adjust though. Liquid Wrench helps...

 

I just used the smaller adjusting wrench. I can get 3/4 of a turn with it in the rear.. not to bad.. I would suggest wearing gloves with knuckle padding on them.

 

I just lubed everything up in the rear tonight. I'll do the fronts tomorrow, but my problem is that I didn't lube them before I mounted them, so the spring is just sitting there on top of the height adjustment ring with no lubrication on it. Maybe some will seep into the contact patch between the spring and height adjustment ring.

And even with the car on a jack, the spring still has lots of pressure. I only lowered the car about halfway down (1.7 inches out of 3.2 available) so the spring is still pretty compressed and I want to raise it during winter which will further compress the spring and be tougher. Which is why I was thinking if I could get a spring compressor in there, I could just crunch the spring and adjust the rings by hand...or at least have an easier time turning the rings.

 

you could try it... I know the compresser I have would not be able to do that. They can fit on the spring .. but if I compress the spring and raise the locking nuts The compressor would be stuck on the spring..

If you lub up the spring and strut the lub will find it's way in ..

 

You mean because as you compress the spring with the height ring, eventually you would be pinching the compressor between two coils of the spring? If so, that makes sense now.

 

I see what you're saying now... I know it sounds bad, but you could always use a bunch of those thick zip ties to compress the spring, then just snip them off when you're done. Again, I know it sounds bad, but it works. Just use like 8 or 9 of them, and be sure your hands are clear when you decide to cut them off. lol

 

Yea

This does work..