Hottuning / Ta Technix Coilovers - Fitting problems?

[tom167]

Oh yeh obviously they have the lil bracket welded on for the arb, and i do mean just a random bracket welded on lol.

Proper coilovers should fit as per the OEM springs though, as antnee showed in his pics the correct springs are large enough to seat on the bearing. Same with my gmax's.

 

[Arnoldo]

Have a set of TA Technix in the garage ready to go on this Friday. Had them in my VW polo and never had any issues with them. Il take pics of the box and the kit it has come with. Can anyone tho tell me what I need to change when fitting these? Eg. Bushes,top mounts?

 

[tom167]

Its advised you change your topmount bushes and bearings.

If you get new ones of these you build the front struts up before you have to take anything off the car. That way you can post pics up and see what we all make of them lol

I had hottuning coilovers on my leon, and couldn't fault them. Just seems there's some parts/fitting issues with the kits supplied for ibizas.

 

[Makey_FR]

thats what the cone is for if you have the smaller 'competition' springs, it locates home inside of the bearing so the spring doesnt sit on the bearing itself, i changed the bearings on mine as they were goosed, although the rubber top mounts were sound, my car had done 45k when i put mine on

 

[tom167]

Hmm when i tried putting mine together i found that the mount, bearing and cone, alll stacked together were too tall to sit on the top of the shock. ie, you ran out of threaded part and couldn't get the nut on. Even tried with no spring fitted to check it wasn't because i hadn't compressed it enough...

Although to be fair, mine were over a year ago now so with any luck they changed the design or parts so the newer kits should fit fine

 

[Makey_FR]

yer when i stacked everything on, i literally needed to just lean on the spring to compress it about half an inch to get the nut on, now they have bedded in you hardly have to do that. Maybe they were putting the kits together wrong or sending the wrong ones out

 

[tom167]

Sounds like lucky dip coilovers lol

 

[chris4500uk]

I've just checked my raceland coilovers and the fit is perfect with the new top mounts.

Can't wait to finally fit them this weekend. Check my post history for the price and images

Can we change the thread title as its not exactly accurate since the OP didn't fit them right? Not having a go or anything.

Cheers

 

[techathy]

I think the title should be kept to stop people from making the same mistake

 

[Arnoldo]

So just to clarify, what is the proper way to fit these

 

[antnee]

They should be like this spring, bearing, topmount

 

[Arnoldo]

Yes I know that :| but do I use the cone?

 

[antnee]

You don't

 

[muddyboots]

So I had mine without the bearing, just resting the cone inside the topmount. Not the best solution, but it sort of worked.

You NEED a bearing at the top !

When you steer, the whole strut turns with the wheel; so the top bearing allows the whole strut/spring to turn freely against the fixed topmount.
With no bearing, all sorts of nastiness will happen - the spring will twist & stress when you steer, steering will become heavy and will tend to spring back to centre, you'll get clunks and twangs when you steer; or the spring might turn but either the top of it will grind away at your top mount and cause damage, or the bottom end will turn against the bottom spring platform and cause damage there.

 

[Aimez]

Its advised you change your topmount bushes and bearings.

.

Is this advised when fitting coilovers then? See I have no clue but every now and then threads like this come up and I am scared and then decide not to buy any. Personally I would not buy cheap ones anyway but even still I am scared!

 

[warren_cox]

Is this advised when fitting coilovers then? See I have no clue but every now and then threads like this come up and I am scared and then decide not to buy any. Personally I would not buy cheap ones anyway but even still I am scared!

I think on cars well over 3 years old it is a way of ensuring you replace a serviceable part at a time when it makes perfect sense to do so (as you have access). Top mounts aren't horribly expensive, and as they are maintaining the integrity of the connection between the strut and the body shell it is imperative that this part is as close to 100% as possible.

On some cars (like the Golf Mk2) you could fit the Corrado top mount as an upgrade, but I am unaware of any such upgrade on any of the SEAT's.

Never fear, there's plenty of brainpower on SCN to point you right, it's just finding the money to pay for it all that is the problem!

 

[muddyboots]

Is this advised when fitting coilovers then?

They are relatively cheap parts, yet the labour required to remove the front struts to replace them is expensive, so it makes sense to replace them if ever you happen to be taking the struts off anyway, for whatever reason.
They are parts that do wear and fail - I've had them fail regularly on cars in the past due to the nature of the roads I travel on, even after relatively low miles.

 

[Aimez]

Okay cheers guys, they are cheap an my car is a 54 plate so I will go with that! I will try my hardest to get either someone of here to do it cheap for me or a friend to help maybe as I don't want to pay a garage after paying for them and then the alignment afterwards! I so not think i could do this on my own and seeing pics like this frightens me!

 

[PH1L NI]

So many different things being said on this thread.

Oh, and emailing them proved no good as they just didn't reply... twice.

 

[antnee]

I got a reply in 2 days I think as I needed to know the thread size (mate stripped the nut!)

What did your emails say?