Battle Magazine — March 1997

Replacing a complete coilover assembly is fairly simple because you do not need a spring compressor or to compress the springs. On the RX-7, the front has four upper-mount fasteners and two strut fasteners; the rear has two upper-mount and one strut fastener. Remove and reinstall them. At the front, take care with the brake line; at the rear, first remove the rear speaker.

To remove the front suspension or coilover, work carefully around the brake hose because the brake caliper is in the way. Remove the caliper using the two bolts indicated (photo 1). The hub and old coilover are secured by these two bolts and nuts (photo 2). Once removed, the lower coilover assembly is free (photo 3). The top is held by four nuts (photo 4); remove them to take out the coilover (photo 5). Preset the ride height on the replacement coilover. For now, set it to 7 cm (photo 6). Reinstall in reverse order: loosely attach the upper mount, connect the coilover to the hub, reinstall the brake caliper, then tighten the upper mount. Pay attention to coilover orientation. Viewed from below, the rounded part of the camber-adjustment pillow ball in the center of the upper mount should face outward.

You can leave one strut bolt installed temporarily. Remove the strut bolts and nuts, then take out the assembly. During installation, loosely attach the upper mount first, then connect the strut. Insert the bolt from the front side. Do the same at the rear, but note that the larger installation hole faces the differential. Also orient the rounded section of the front camber-adjustment pillow ball toward the outside of the car (see illustration). Tighten the pillow-ball nut after lowering the car to the ground.

If the nut spins and will not tighten, borrow an impact wrench at a gas station when changing a tire. The final—and most important—step is setting ride height. Before installation, we set both front and rear to 7 cm from the bottom of the threaded section. Once the car was lowered to the ground, it sat extremely low. We changed it to 9 cm front and 10 cm rear. It is still a little low, but looks and feels great, so we kept that setting. Cars look cool when they sit low!

The coilovers installed here already came with pillow-ball upper mounts, so they can be swapped as-is. If your coilovers do not have them and you are installing new pillow-ball mounts, note this: before jacking up the car, while the tire remains on the ground, loosen the center nut indicated with an impact wrench. It will not come loose otherwise. Do this before removing the coilover; once loosened, the rest is easy.