Cousins,

I just finished (I thought) completely rebuilding the front end and rebushing the rear suspension on my '84 245 I recently purchased ($2000 - 94K miles and Cherry).

New bushings everywhere, Bilsteins, tie rod ends, ball joints and a new steering rack. It definitly needed the shocks, struts, most of the bushings and steering rack (bad leak at the boots), and I replaced the rest just because that's what I do for cars I plan to keep forever.

The job went pretty smoothly over two full weekends (maybe 16 hours total), and was much helped by my purchase of a 6 ton press ($65) at Harbor Freight and the rental of the Volvo tool to replace the rear trailing arm bushings (from Duane Holberg of this list for a very fair $35).

WHILE I WAS AT IT (famous last words...), I thought I'd cut a coil off the front springs to lower the car slightly and give it a little better spring rate/firmer ride. Pretty easy to cut with an air cutoff tool, although I waited a lot to let the compressor catch up.

So after putting everything together and feeling rather proud of myself, I ran the wagon around for a 30mile test drive. I was rather pissed that I could still have a clunk from the front end (and one from the back, too, but that's just the tailpipe that needs some adjustment...). But the big surprise was that the wheel pulled hard to the right - I mean a lane change in 1.5 seconds, and a steady pull on the wheel. I had eyeballed the toe in when I put everything together and knew the alighnment would be out, so figured with everything replaced it was pretty far out.

So I took it to a good alighnment shop the other day, and when it was on the rack the guy said that the rack was bad, and he couldn't do anything with the alighnment at all - that the rack was pulling everything to the right - with the wheels off the ground and the engine (pump) on or off!!

Discouraged, and expecting another rack replacement, I called the rack people and told them the story, and they had never heard of such a problem, but helpfully suggested I take the tie rod ends off to isolate the rack with the wheels off the ground, which I did today.

So - with tie rod ends removed, the right wheel would immediately move to the right - hard. So I poked around the right strut, and after a while, realized that the cut end of the coil had slipped over the spring retainer/seat, was pressed against the tower area of inner fender, and was torquing the strut radially. Bummer! So I took it all apart and flipped the spring to see if the lower spring seat would do a better job of holding the spring in place - NO DICE! the spring still slipped over the lower spring seat - but the wheel doesn't torque anymore.

The problem is that the shortened coil leaves an end that has a larger space between coils, and allows a portion of the coil to slip over the spring seat.

So I'll either order some IPD coils, or visit my local Pick 'n Pull to replace the stock coils. Please learn from my mistake, brothers...