Hey efunk, engine goes in this week. As for horsepower, hoping for 100 but I reckon I'll see 85-90. I'll completely strip the engine again when I get back from PNG and get it right up to scratch, I'd like to do a bit of work to the con-rods. I had an insane camshaft in it earlier but that made the engine useless to me under 2500RPM so at this moment it has the 'better behaved' alternate camshaft in it.

Anyway I lowered it yesterday, and thanks to Andy-roo for his impressive knowledge in slammin' 1000's, he gave me some advice on the rear leafs. Cheers mate.

It was pretty straight forward but when people say to flip the rear springs, this is near enough impossible without causing damage to the undercarriage. It's way too low if you flip the springs.

1. Support the body/chassis of the vehicle high off the ground.

2. Disconnect the shocks:






3. Jack the diff housing up to take wight off the springs:






4. Disconnect all the springs mounts:





5. Drop the springs:






6. Separate the springs by un-bolting the centre-pin. You can remove the lowest/smallest spring but this will make it pretty sloppy in the ride, so I sandwiched it between the largest and medium leafs.

Be sure to clamp the set of springs before unbolting the centre-pin as the pressure on the pin will cross thread the nut as you undo it. I just used a set of vice grips to keep them together. G-clamp would be ideal.






7. Replace the spring, repeat on the other side and drop the car back on it's wheels:






You can see the difference in ride height compared to the front which I did later:






8. The front is tricky as it involves separating the stub axle assembly from the upper ball-joint, I spent most my time trying to remove the ruined split pin.

Be careful that the assembly isn't hanging off the brake lines when it has been separated from the upper control arm, in all honesty these should be disconnected to avoid any extra work [if they were to break].

9. When the stub axle assembly has been separated it should drop low enough (pivoting on the lower control arm) to enable access to the bump stops. Take out the bump stops.

10. Place bump stops in a vice and DO NOT BOTHER WITH A HACKSAW. This takes forever and the blade 'walks' all over the place giving a very ordinary cut. I used a carpenters saw with a decent dose of oil rubbed onto the blade, this sliced nice and straight. I'll try and get some pictures of the detail.

I removed about two thirds of the rubber and this was how she sat: