In a message dated 5/22/03 10:23:34 PM Eastern Daylight Time, rcooper9@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Have any of you changed the front shocks on a 1969 Imperial with budd brakes/
If so how did you accomplish the task?
Roger Cooper
Roger,
You will need to obtain the complete book of expletives, curses and swearing. Secondly, you should remove all women and children from earshot before proceeding.
I changed shocks shortly after purchasing my 69. I ordered KYB's and was all excited about getting them in. I enlisted the help of fellow Imperialist Chris Hawkins for the task -- another person around is a great idea -- having a witness forced me to retain some sanity. The old shocks came out easily, but installation of the new ones turned out to be a real chore. You will need to remove the rubber bumper pad from the upper control arm as you need every bit of room you can get. I think we even removed the stabalizer bars to get a better angle, though I do not believe this accomplished much. The problem is the lack of space to get the shock angled up into the shock tower. My new shocks came compressed, but only partially. You absolutely must get them compressed fully and tied off. We used picture hanging wire to tie it off once compressed. After much frustration and scratched paint on the new shock, we managed to get it into the tower and cut the wire to let it expand upwards into the upper hole. Be extremely careful to not break whatever is holding the shock compressed as you try to get it into the tower. This happened on the first one and I did not think we would ever get it compressed enough to get the upper shaft through the hole without dropping the whole lower control arm assembly. After many fruitless attempts and a reasonable amout of blood, I gave it up until next morning when I somehow managed to compress it and get it to expand into the upper hole after a number of attempts.
I had also purchased new shocks at the same time for my 73 which has the same shock tower design; they are still boxed and riding in the trunk until I muster the courage to try again.
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