GTXgp
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- Location
- Las Colinas (DFW), TX
- Buick Ownership
- '12 Regal GS
After months of busy schedules, procrastination, and insane Texas heat... I finally conned a few friends to help me knock this out. For those who didn't follow the previous thread, these are H&R 28998-5 springs, from Germany. They are not sold in the states at the time of this post so you will have to coordinate with a retailer in Europe. Also, from my research, I believe (but can't guarantee) that this same part number will work on regular Regals. The different PNs H&R lists are for the "Sport Tourer" (read: station wagon) and AWD variants.
I am not posting this as a step-by-step, I am simply posting some of the tricks/traps I ran into getting this done, which will be useful if you have done suspension before and want to know the differences with the HiPer. Also, this is NOT a one-man job, there is heavy lifting and maneuvering that you could not do by yourself.
We started with the driver's side. We didn't have a service manual so we were just figuring it out as we went and basically unbolted EVERYTHING LOL. It took an hour of fiddling, but we ended up with this:
For the passenger side, things went MUCH smoother, taking 20-30min and here are some notes:
1. You need to unbolt the tie-rod end, axle nut, sway bar end-link, rear strut bolt (holds two brackets), caliper bolts, and the lower control arm bolt. Then you can unbolt the top strut mount nut (under the hood, there are two... just undo the first one and remove the collar)
2. You do NOT need to unbolt the strut to knuckle (unusual for those familiar with McPherson), or the two vertical bolts that are under the lower control arm bolt.
3. You will end up with something like this:
Loosening the strut-to-knuckle bolts do absolutely nothing for you in removing this assembly, I know because we did it on the driver's side 😉 Also, by leaving these bolts tight you should help keep your alignment in check.
Before I move on, let's talk about that sway-bar end link. The driver's side is easy and has plenty of access. However, the passenger side has a welded brake line and bracket in the way:
Our solution was to remove the bottom of the link instead, this was a PITA as there is virtually no room there either!!!
As we were putting it back together we figured out a better way. Save the tire-rod until just before you remove the upper strut bolt to remove the assembly. By this time everything will be loose enough that you can pull the assembly out toward you to give you more room to access the top end-link bolt. This would have saved us a lot of time and frustration!!
Now that everything is out of the car you can unbolt the remaining upper strut bolt to remove the spring. Once again, there are two central bolts on top of the strut mount. Some of you may be familiar with the typical three bolts that hold the strut to the strut-tower, this strut utilizes the central strut stud with an additional plate and bolt to hold the assembly to the strut tower. By undoing that first bolt (to remove it from the car) you will NOT be loosening the spring.
There is not much pressure on the spring and we didn't use spring compressors to remove or reinstall the spring:
Now just put everything back in the way it came out 😉
The rear multi-link makes everything SUPER EASY! Do the rear suspension last so you will feel like superman with how quick you get it done.
Other than taking the wheels off, there is.... ONE, yes ONE bolt you have to remove to get the rear spring off:
Be sure to use a jack under the control arm to hold the tension of the spring while you remove the bolt. Here is another angle showing where the bolt is with the jack lowering the control arm down:
Once you lower the control arm, the spring just pulls out:
Replace the spring with your new ones, jack the control arm back up, replace the bolt, repeat for the other side.
VIOLA, you are done.
I am not posting this as a step-by-step, I am simply posting some of the tricks/traps I ran into getting this done, which will be useful if you have done suspension before and want to know the differences with the HiPer. Also, this is NOT a one-man job, there is heavy lifting and maneuvering that you could not do by yourself.
We started with the driver's side. We didn't have a service manual so we were just figuring it out as we went and basically unbolted EVERYTHING LOL. It took an hour of fiddling, but we ended up with this:
For the passenger side, things went MUCH smoother, taking 20-30min and here are some notes:
1. You need to unbolt the tie-rod end, axle nut, sway bar end-link, rear strut bolt (holds two brackets), caliper bolts, and the lower control arm bolt. Then you can unbolt the top strut mount nut (under the hood, there are two... just undo the first one and remove the collar)
2. You do NOT need to unbolt the strut to knuckle (unusual for those familiar with McPherson), or the two vertical bolts that are under the lower control arm bolt.
3. You will end up with something like this:
Loosening the strut-to-knuckle bolts do absolutely nothing for you in removing this assembly, I know because we did it on the driver's side 😉 Also, by leaving these bolts tight you should help keep your alignment in check.
Before I move on, let's talk about that sway-bar end link. The driver's side is easy and has plenty of access. However, the passenger side has a welded brake line and bracket in the way:
Our solution was to remove the bottom of the link instead, this was a PITA as there is virtually no room there either!!!
As we were putting it back together we figured out a better way. Save the tire-rod until just before you remove the upper strut bolt to remove the assembly. By this time everything will be loose enough that you can pull the assembly out toward you to give you more room to access the top end-link bolt. This would have saved us a lot of time and frustration!!
Now that everything is out of the car you can unbolt the remaining upper strut bolt to remove the spring. Once again, there are two central bolts on top of the strut mount. Some of you may be familiar with the typical three bolts that hold the strut to the strut-tower, this strut utilizes the central strut stud with an additional plate and bolt to hold the assembly to the strut tower. By undoing that first bolt (to remove it from the car) you will NOT be loosening the spring.
There is not much pressure on the spring and we didn't use spring compressors to remove or reinstall the spring:
Now just put everything back in the way it came out 😉
The rear multi-link makes everything SUPER EASY! Do the rear suspension last so you will feel like superman with how quick you get it done.
Other than taking the wheels off, there is.... ONE, yes ONE bolt you have to remove to get the rear spring off:
Be sure to use a jack under the control arm to hold the tension of the spring while you remove the bolt. Here is another angle showing where the bolt is with the jack lowering the control arm down:
Once you lower the control arm, the spring just pulls out:
Replace the spring with your new ones, jack the control arm back up, replace the bolt, repeat for the other side.
VIOLA, you are done.
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