***Sorry everyone, this isn't a DIY, rather a feedback thread on the DIY of the S3 if you're going to install your own***
Yesterday, my brother and I installed H&R coils on his S3. Now I've performed several coil installs and must say, this one is somewhere in between the difficulty of a B8/8.5, and MKV chassis.
REARS:
The rears are pretty much straight forward but you do run into a couple of curve balls. First off, the rear right bolt securing the shock tower to the chassis is partially blocked by a large "device". We unfortunately, did not take a photo of it so I cannot reference it. I will state that you have to remove half of the wheel liner to access the bolt holding this device. Once you have the bolt removed, you can shimmy the device over and remove the bolt securing the shock to the chassis. If you do not, you cannot remove the shock bolt.
The other curve ball is, the attachment of the RSB. It attached to the lower control arm and the bolt has to be removed. If not, you cannot drop the control arm low enough to remove the rear springs.
Aside from these too curve-balls, the rear coils were pretty straight forward.
FRONTS
The fronts are easy to remove. I read a few DIY's on the S3 chassis. Most stated that the axle bolt does not need to be removed because you have room to remove the shock. Because I've removed axle bolts before on the MKV chassis, I went ahead and removed it. You'll need a serious breaker bar and someone to step on the brakes since it's torqued down with about 150lbs/torque. Once removed, this allowed us so much more room to swing the wheel/brake assembly to drop the front shock. The curve-balls that you'll run into, the shear weight of the wheel/brake assembly. It's heavy so you'll need an extra set of hands and a jack. You'll also need to turn the wheel to slide the axle back into the wheel hub.
Overall, it's totally manageable with two people and it helped that I have a QuickJack lift. Overall, it took us about 7 hours to complete, but that's with 3 breaks and not knowing about the curve-balls. If I had to do it again, I'm sure we could do it within 5 hrs.
Feel free to ping me if you have any questions on the install.
Sorry for the less than stellar photo. It's the only one I took.
Bookmarks