Guys who have done the 12a to SE suspension swap how long did it take you and how many guys were helping out? I want to get a rough idea of how long this will take me to do with one buddy. This assuming we have all the tools and lifts.

FYI my car presently is an 85 GSL.

 

Took me(all by myself) 12-16 hours to swap the front struts on my SE. Given the fact that you don't have to disassemble spring/strut assembly (45-60 mins each including some paint) you can probably get this done in 10-12 with some help. Beware! my bolts were very rusty and stuborn soak with pen. oil now! and be prepared to destroy some hardware to get the front end apart.

Also there is a very tricky bolt that requires an offset 16 or 18 mm (don't remember the size off hand) wrench make sure you have one. I had to go to sears

However, I bought the combination 16 18mm offset and have found it very handy since I've had it.

 

fonts you should be able to do in about an hour, asuuming you're swapping complete strut assemblies.

rear should take 2-3hours, again assuming you have a complete axewell, achmel, mr foley

if you just have all the peices in a pile its gonna add a few hours...

not really hard work, just big and heavy

 

with 2 people (and the engine out) it took us about 4 hours, but i have swapped that rear end a few times before, prob could do it in 3 if we had to do it again

<l><l>

 

its easy...
i did it by myself.

for the front all you need to do is swap the caliper hangers, and brake equip.

the rear is super easy also...i thought it went together easier than it came apart...

be carefull not to strip the brake lines...
and make sure you get the E brake cables off of the SE car..you will need them. just the rear half of them..you will see once you are under there.

 

thanks for being so helpful so far guys......keep em coming! Also any tips are appreciated!

 

I wish someone had a step by step guide lol. Would probably save me hours.

 

front:

remove caliper bolt (1) 14mm, pull off caliper put out of the way

remove 2 bolts on bottom of strut (17?mm), remove 4 bolts on top of strut, grab strut and pull

put gsl-se strut into the top loosely put a couple of nuts in to keep it from falling out. cram it onto the bottom steering framus, put in 2 lower bolts, and tighten upper nuts.

swap caliper; use the right flare wrenches!

 

thanks...for reference I will be using my exisiting tokico blues and b&g springs from my GSL too if that helps.

 

oh then you gotta swap all that over, its easy though

 

I guess however you take the struts/springs out of the se strut housing you put the the tokicos and b&g springs back in the exact same way you took them out but in reverse.

 

yep, do one said at a time, so if you get confused/lost/it gets dark you have one side to look at thats 'right'

 

I've got something like that.
http://www.wankel.net/~krwright/cars...ds/brakes.html
and
http://www.wankel.net/~krwright/cars...l-se_susp.html

It took me several days to actually finish the swap, but really only about6 or 8 hours of actual work. I started late, and had to finish days later, when I had time.
I should note that I had already upgraded my '79 GS ot GSL suspension a few years prior, so the hardware was in good shape, and I used plenty of PB B'laster just to make sure. Cleaned and painted all the SE stuff before I put it in, which I'm not counting toward the actual swap time, but was what made it take more than a day.

 

how much did it cost you guys to get all the hardware and misc useful tool (ie: offset wrenches)?

 

yea I want to know about this too. About how much did it cost yall to do this.