Front Springs

The previous owner had cut down the front springs to lower the car.  That plus the Euro spoiler meant that one scraped the nose or pinch welds a lot.  I got a set of used springs from another GTS owner that had updated his.  As you can see, there's quite a bit of difference between the cut one and the original length.

Replacing the springs isn't too hard, only three bolts, compress the springs, remove the retainers holding the spring tops and reverse the process with the new ones.  You have to remove the two bolts that hold the upper A-arm and shock to the frame.  Then remove the bolt holding the lower end of the shock and it's free.  I also replaced the silent blocks on the shocks because they were compressed on one side.

Replacing these involved using the hydraulic press to push out the old silent blocks and install the new ones.  I had to cut away the rubber on one side of the old pieces to the 32mm socket would fit against the metal sleeve.  It turns out that the OD of a Sears 32mm socket is just about 20 thousands smaller than the ID of the shock, so it worked perfectly as a pusher.

Here you can see a new silent block being pushed in place.

The hardest part was getting the upper A-arm aligned with the brackets on the chassis so the bolts could be put back in.  There's very little room to work and you can't use a tapered punch to help align things because of that.

You can see the newly installed spring on the left above and the whole assembly on the car.

So the new springs raised the front of car by 2".  Perhaps a little nose high, but at least I don't have to worry about a large pebble being in the middle of the road anymore.  Other 308s that I've measured seem to run around 26.5".