Why Coilovers Are More Work Than Shocks and Springs (but Also Cooler)

I spent the last week installing a set of Fortune Auto 500 Series coilovers on my project Civic and the job went smoothly. It took that long because instead of trying to get it all done in one sleepless night, I spread it over a few wrenching sessions between business hours and dinner.

Manage your time and suddenly a project becomes much less stressful—go figure.

This project was pretty straightforward: I'd changed the shocks and springs on this Honda about 18 months ago, I had already gone through most of the motions. And this time, I had far less rust to contend with. I just had to learn the quirks of coilovers. I know, a pro mechanic would have had this banged out in an afternoon working leisurely. Well, at my shop, you get what you pay for.

In the middle of April, I returned to my New York garage where my Honda was hibernating and a set of coilovers was boxed up waiting for me. I wanted to compete in a hillclimb race in Vermont on the first weekend in May.

That created a finish-by deadline, which I made a little more aggressive by booking an alignment. The car would need to be laser-aligned after changing its suspension because the angles of everything would be out of wack. I set that for three days before I was meant to leave for the race—giving me just enough time for a panic fix if the alignment guy found anything scary that needed immediate attention while the car was on the rack.

Then I simply planned my calendar backward from there—one evening to clean the car and prep it for surgery, then one corner per evening, then a night for double-checking torques and measurements, then alignment day.

Now that I'm typing this with a race-ready Civic in my driveway, I can tell you about how the coilover installation process differs from a simple shock and spring change, share how I ended up with a set of Fortune Auto's suspension for this demonstration, and provide some user insight that isn't in the instruction manual.

If you've installed shocks, you can do coilovers. If you're comfortable doing oil changes and brakes, shocks are (generally) only slightly more complicated. What kills you here is the same thing that can make any under-car project a pain: rust. If