This is specific to the LC accent (2000-2002), but should be the same for most hyundai's and macpherson strut cars. Your tools, time, and fenderwells will vary. 8) Oh yeah,and if you mess up your car by trying this its on you.
First things first, this is not very hard to do. It is time consuming, frustrating, and requires lots of elbow grease with WD40, but it can be done in about 2-3 hours if you work quickly. It took me about 6 hours. Special thanks to
shadohh for letting me use his driveway (despite the snow it was about 60 out), his garage, some of his tools, and manpower.
To install struts, you will need at least the following: Spring compressor, jack, jack stands, 2 rachet and socket sets (metric sockets up 19 or 21mm, cant remember) or 1 set with a set of metric wrenches, and some time. Gloves are very nice to have as well, since the fenderwell gets pretty nasty.
Ok, first thing you gotta do is raise the car up off the ground. If you're doing all 4 struts (as you should be), you might as well get the whole car off the ground and rotate the tires while you're there since the tires need to come off anyways. The hood will be need to be open, as will the hatch, so roll down the windows and play some music while you work.
Time to start unbolting stuff.
Up in the engine bay/under the rear speaker grills are the strut tower mounts. Undo all three nuts with a 12mm socket. The front passenger strut tower has 4 bolts, 3 for the strut and 1 for the acceleration sensor thats a 10mm.
Now that the car is up in the air, take a look inside the fenderwell at the strut assembly.
The two bolts at the bottom of the strut body that hold the spindle up need to come out. I believe they are 17mm. Some PB Blaster and an impact gun goes real well here. You will also need to disconnect the brake line from its support mount on the strut body (note: you are NOT taking the brake line apart, you are simply pulling it away from the strut body).
Once the strut is completely loose, just pull it out. It should look something like this:
Now its time to compress the spring. Then take your hand in either a glove or with a leather cloth or something and grap the strut shaft (hold it TIGHT). Then take your impact gun and use it to get the 19mm bolt off the top of the strut housing. The shaft will spin with the nut (on the rears for sure, not 100% positive about the fronts) so you'll need to hold on tigh to make sure its spinning slower than the nut, if at all. When its all apart it should look like this:
Here's the side by side of a new KYB GR-2 strut next to a 55,000mile+ OE strut.
You can see that the KYB shaft and body are slightly bigger and beefier. Also, you can see that the KYB is not blown and sitting at its full extension :lol:.
Now all you need to do is take the rubber spring seats off the old struts and put them on the new ones, and reverse the disassembly procedure. Dont forget the bump stops and dust covers! When its all said and done, it should look like this:
Now lower the car back down, double check that everything is tight on the strut mounts, and set an appointment for an alignment for two weeks from now. You've got new struts, so its off to the twistiez to celebrate.8D
[Edited by skierd on Apr 12, 2004 2:00 PM]
[Edited by skierd on May 11, 2005 4:56 PM]
