Lude Generation

So, James (LLL) had been nice enough to swap me his old basics for some CF goodies and spend 2 hours on the drive talking cars with me. Good saturday afternoon by all accounts!

Anyhow, I was going to wait until I had the money to get the 5stud top hats but I'm sat in the house bored with nothing to do for the rest of the weekend

Before I get stuck in and end up making a mess, what needs doing to swap them over? Any special tools etc needed? Any particular process for doing it etc? It's my first time so any guidance would be useful, I read the TEIN guide in the wiki but it just said take off the old ones and put these on which isn't a great deal of help

Get a copy of the 5g bible and have a read of that, explains how to do it in there

Excuse the stupid question, where can I get a copy of the 5g bible from?

here
http://prelude.openbarr.com/manuals/5th_gen/

Breaker bar and a 17mm socket for the lower front folk. 12mm for the upper folk bolt. 10mm for the top mounts. A lot of strength and cut hands pulling the shocks out. It's vet tight up there.

Not sure if it's similar to the 4th gen, but I did mine last week and now I know what I'm doing it's very easy!

Best way to change the fronts is to remove the fork from the bottom of the strut, and then the strut will drop out nice and easy.

You may also find it helps to remove one of the anti roll bar drop links, as when you fit the coilover it will pull up on the other side making it more difficult to remove.

Ok, done a bit more reading and having the wheel alignment done afterwards has been mentioned a few times so don't think I'll do it just yet as wasn't planning on doing this yet. Anyone know the cost of getting them swapped over with the wheel alignment done at the same time?

Prob about an hours labour and think I paid £70 for a full alignment that could cope with the 4ws

how low are you gonna go with these if its only 35mm or so i dont think you need an alignment doing as your not moving the suspension arms.
if your reusing the tophats you will need spring compressors to remove them you can do it matey would be easier if the teins came with tophats.
your looking at maybe 3-4 hours on your own the first one will take the longest always does there will probably be some seized bolts so prepare with plenty of wd40.

it is pretty simple tbh, the hardest part is physically getting the rear struts out of the car! the rear is 3 bolts, the front is 4 if i remember rightly! just make sure both front wheels are off the ground when your doing the front, and the same with the rear so you dont have any ARB akwardness, as gayno said remove the pinch bolt that connects the front shock to the fork then gently bounce on the hub to separate the two