My Black Brick

The ipd Sport Springs are installed now and they ride great. At left are the driver-side springs, new and old. I can’t believe how much shorter the new spring is when they’re unsprung. It made installation easier than removal because we didn’t need to compress the coil. The new spring was so much shorter that it slipped right in without much compression. On the ground the car now rides only about 2″ shorter in the front, not nearly as much difference as these uninstalled springs look.

New springs on all four corners took a little more than 3 hours with 2 people. My buddy Andy has a good set of jacks and stands and we used his dad’s impact wrench to tighten up the coil compressor. It was an uneventful installation; luckily there weren’t any stripped nuts or rusted bolts to contend with. I shot pics and video.

The lowering springs I ordered last week from ipd came in. They’re so pretty in blue. Can’t wait to see how they complement everything else.

Click here to vote for my blog on the Volvolution site

FCP Groton started a new Volvo forum, Volvolution. To gain readership they created a contest to find the best blog post. I entered a couple of posts, including  “Where Do You Put Your Latte, You Freak“.

You’ll need to register with the site, which is a quick username and password setup. The prize is a $200 credit, which is just the price of the lowering springs I’m looking at. I promise to document and post the installation, so vote now!

UPDATE: Voting is over. I tied for second place. Thanks!

I installed anti-sway bars with my buddy Andy last summer and they ride nice, but aren’t as dramatic a change as I expected.

More details and pics after the jump.

READ MORE…

IPD had a free shipping sale so I finally bought their 25mm anti-sway bars. They sat around the house for a few weeks but I finally put them on today.

My friend Andy keeps his Porsche at a garage about a 1/2 hour away and I drove out there to use the hydraulic lift. We jacked the Brick up in the air and pulled off the old bars. I thought we wouldn’t need to take off the front wheels but I was wrong. We had a minor disaster where we almost dropped the rear differential; I ended up supporting the rear on my shoulders while Andy ran to get a jack. Other than that, installation was straight forward and simple.

When I hit the road I had a tough time noticing a difference. You really have to try to rock the car side-to-side to feel the improvement. There’s no difference when cruising straight down the road, but hitting exit/entrance ramps is a marked change. It wasn’t as dramatic as I expected; the bars really make the car drive like it should, rather than being a big performance boost. Lane changes and turns feel safer and I’m now aware of how poorly it handled without them. I can only imagine how bad the older bricks were that didn’t have anti-sways, or had ones that were thin as paper clips.