TRD Strut Install

[mannycheckers]

Greetings,

I recently received some goodies from Toyota: a spoiler, bumper protector, mudguards, and TRD struts and springs. I was excited to start customizing the car, and planned to do all of the installation myself.

The spoiler was a somewhat difficult install due to the precision needed with drilling. If I had to do it over I would have drilled the two center holes first, and then marked the two outer holes. The template that Toyota included seems off by about by just a hair. It turned out good, but the spoiler has a small gap on both edges and not in the middle. I'll have to upload pics soon.

The rear shocks and springs was a simple install. I had trouble trying to fit the TRD springs in the mount, but was able to get the leverage by shoving a breaker bar into the lower axle and pushing down with my foot.

My biggest issue was the front struts. I was able to fit my wrench and a 6mm hex key into the upper strut mount without removing the wiper cowl, but the nut was just frozen. I tried adding bars onto the hex key for leverage, but I started to worry that the hex key would break. So I decided to remove the wiper cowl anyway to get some more room to work, and I ended up stripping and splitting the hex insert on the upper strut. Damn.

I waved the white flag of surrender and reinstalled the wiper cowl and reattched the lower bolts to the current strut. I plan on taking it to a shop so they can install the two front strut assemblies and perform an alignment. In the meantime, I will be driving a raked yaris because the back now sits lower in the front. That's life I guess.