I am in the process of installing my ground control coilovers and tokico illumina 5-way adjustables. Fronts are done but when doing the rears I ran into a problem. The rears use a nut that has nylon around the inside at the tope so it gets caught obviously as it gets tightened down. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, and I'm sure I'd run into this problem with a normal nut when trying to torque it down at the end anyways, BUT.... as I tighten it down the piston of the shock turns with it. I can't get it to tighten down any further than hand tight. Tried tightening it with a normal ratchet and a torque wrench and came up with nothing. The instructions say not to use an impact wrench so that is out of the question.

What do I do? How do I get the piston to stop spinning or how do I tighten the nut down at all? I thought that maybe if I put the wheels on and lowered the car down so the rears could compress and put pressure on the shocks and springs it might tighten? But then again I could see how that wouldn't make a difference.

Any tips? Any experience with this? All help or suggestions appreciated, thanks.

 

Air powered impact gun

 

I thought about that, but the directions for the Tokicos specifically said, and I quote, "DO NOT USE AN IMPACT WRENCH"

So I was scared off from using it.

 

Set the gun to low torque, tighten it and forget about it... nylon self-locking nuts require tigthening once... you can use an impact gun as logn as you don't spun the shaft senseless, or you can risk it and wrap the shaft with cloth, put on vice grips, and then tighten the top nut.... and then hope you didn't deform the shaft.

Honestly, I have used my little impact gun(named lolly) on 2 of 4 torque setting to tighten the nuts you describe and never had a problem with any of the shocks/struts.... just use the gun to tighten the nut, not to spin the shaft.

 

Sounds logical. So basically just set it to a low speed, go at the nut and before it starts to spin the piston just stop and leave it at that tightness basically? Now that someone else has confirmed using an impact gun is okay I feel better about it

Thanks.

 

Wait, so the piston spins when you tighten the top nut that holds it to the mounting plate that is attached to the car? The plates are keyed so the top of the shock won't turn when it is installed in your car. Of course, this is all wrong if coil overs come with new un-keyed top plates but if not, the top of the shock doesn't turn imdependent of the mounting plates. This was my experence when I lowered my car, but I didn't go to coilovers. I doubt it's differnt thought, as our cars have shocks, not struts, in the back anyways.

 

Are you talking about how it is D-Shaped on the top black larger washer type thing? So that it locks against the strut mount? With ground control coilovers you have to grind that D-Shaped hole into a circle so it can sit lower, so it no longer locks against the strut mount. If that's what you're talking abou that is...

 

Yeah thats what I ment dDub, thanks for telling me. So to everyone else, my previous post was umm.. just kidding. My bad, sorry guys.

 

No worries. Since ground controls aren't a full "kit" like other coilover sets you kind of have to put some things together like this. It's actually rather annoying, but oh well. The fronts were easy at least

 

You can't change impact gun speed, only impact gun torque. On a small, 200 ft-lbs gun, set it to the medium torque setting. Put it on and squeeze the trigger until the nut starts tightening. The shaft will spin a little bit, but not much. Basically, what I am trying to say is don;t keep squeezing the trigger after the nut is tightened... you know, use common sense.

 

Yah, I gotcha. Thanks for the help, hopefully today I'll be able to finish it and lower the car down and get it to an acceptable height after some adjustments and tweaking. I just hope there's not too much camber