Fitting advice for coilovers wanted

Having done this a number of times my favourite method is:-
Front - detach the ARB lower at the wishbone and then undo and slide towards the front the long top inner bolt which attaches the wishbone to the chassis - no need to remove it providing the wishbone swings free. It may help to partly undo the ARB chassis mounting bolts as these go up into the channel you're sliding the bolt head along.
At the rear similar - detach ARB lower mount then remove lower outer wishbone mounting bolt. Note the later has a captive nut welded to the wishbone so be careful not to apply so much force it detaches -not the end of the world if it does as you can replace with an ordinary nut and lock washer but it's a bugger to position - long nose locking grips (read long nose Moles) are ideal!
As above ^^ it helps in all cases to soak all bolts, nuts and fittings with penetrating oil days before hand.
Also use motorcycle spray chain grease (Screwfix or Toolstation) on all nuts, threads to stop them from rusting when re-assembling.
If you have polybushes then lubricate with the chain spray whilst you're at it and make sure the wishbones move easily up & down.
Note that a jack (scissor to give small adjustments) under the outer bottom of the wishbone is great for removal and replacement of bolts partic. the ARB bolts when reassembling.
HTH Cheers, Pewe.

Mine were a bit of a nightmare. Spring compressors can help if your long bolt won't come out. I'm sure you're familiar with the "long bolt method".

The rears are way easier, as long as your captive nuts on the lower shock bolt play ball. Spray them with PlusGas every day for a week before. There's a little hole in the bottom of the lower arm where you can spray directly onto the captive nut. Do this as much as possible as you don't want these to snap out of their retaining tabs and spin with the bolt, bit of a faff to sort them. The rears came out with some persuasion, I got a jack handle to lever the arm down, sat on it, and yanked the shock out. Worked fine for both sides.

My fronts were a total nightmare as the long bolt was well and truly seized in. I had no torch to heat them, and no spring compressors. What I did I wouldn't really recommend as potentially dangerous, but I was at the end of my tether with it. Jacked up the lower arm so the shock was compressed, undid the center nut on the top of the shock (the securing nut that holds the spring in), lowered the jack down very very slowly, this decompressed the spring so it had no tension in it at all. Then my dad and I hacked the crap out of it with an angle grinder, and removed the shock in two pieces.

As I said, wouldn't recommend, but that was my method. I wouldn't fancy doing it again as compressed springs are dangerous and all that.

Correct. The scissor jack then helps re-align them on the way back up.
Cheers, Pewe.

Only had time to fit the fronts today


Rear wheel, front was about the same.


Front on HSD's, this was just as high as they would go and still leave enough thread in the lower mount to be safe (25mm)
Just hope it doesn't get much lower when they settle.

Had problems pushing the wishbones down far enough and no way could I get the shock out, then went for plan b which was crack the upper ball joint etc, this plan went sideways when one of the split pins sheared when trying to remove it so out came the grinder, the bastard didn't argue with that (spring that is not ball joint) I cut the springs until I could compress the damper enough to slide it up and out of the wishbones.

As for the shock, removed the locking collars, lower mount etc and copper slipped everything, seated the spring, locked it up. Measured 25mm between the bottom of the locking ring, for the lower mount,
and the end of the thread on the damper body then wound the mount up and locked it in place.

I'd like to say that rebuilding it was the reverse of dismantling but wouldn't recommend using the grinder method to fit the new shocks.

Not sure if I got lucky or that measuring them was worthwhile, but the car was level when I dropped it down so no adjustment was needed.