C1/107/Aygo Bilstein shocks & Apex lowering springs

In today’s video, I’m installing Bilstein shocks and Apex lowering springs on to #projectc1. I’m doing this for two reasons; improved handling and also because the existing shocks are well and truly knackered! The rear shocks have collapsed completely and the front ones are weeping oil and were picked up on last year’s MOT. Its MOT time again very soon, so it’s time to get the done. I got these units used from a friend of mine called Brian (IG @road_track_race) who had them on his track car for the grand total of about 1,000 miles. He since upgraded to coil overs, so these were going spare. They’re a damn site of an upgrade over OEM and my suspension is knackered anyway, so this was a no brainer for me.

I started at the rear because they’re dead easy to do. It’s a simple case of undo a couple of bolts and everything simply falls out of the car. They’re replaced in the reverse of removal, jobs a gud un. The front shocks are a little more involved. I first changed the top mount on the front shocks. As they were already built up and off the car, I just compressed the spring to access the top mount, swap it out and release the spring again. To make life easier when installing, I undid the bottom ball joint to give me better access when hanging the strut. I then removed the scuttle panel and undid the top mount with the tool that I custom made earlier in the video. Once this was done, I threaded the nut back on a little to provide some resistance for when I removed the shock absorber with a liberal application of percussive maintenance, or to non-engineers, I hit it with a hammer until it bent to my will lol. Installation was the reverse of removal, but with a liberal application of copper grease to aid installation and future maintenance.

I’m going to have the tracking done on the car soon, but I also need to change the track rod ends and lower wish bones in a future video, so there’s no point in doing that right now.


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