Need to Replace Stock Suspension

[mora2818]

So my rear shocks are all but shot now so I need to replace my suspension here pretty soon. However I have somewhat of a dilemma. The rig sits a little cockeyed and by that I mean the front left is sagging a little or the right rear is sitting too far up. I think it is my front left coil that is the culprit. I measured the distance between the strut housing on each end of the coil and the left side has about .5 inches of space less than the right side. That is why I think it looks to be sagging on the left side and jacked up in the right rear if that makes sense. Not to mention the rear coils seem to have the same amount of space between the top of the coil housing and bottom. Is there anyway to determine exactly why it sits cockeyed? I don't want to replace all 4 coil springs just to find out I only needed 1 coil spring.

 

Thanks for the help.

Edited July 17, 2008 by mora2818

[XPLORx4]

So my rear shocks are all but shot now so I need to replace my suspension here pretty soon. However I have somewhat of a dilemma. The rig sits a little cockeyed and by that I mean the front left is sagging a little or the right rear is sitting too far up. I think it is my front left coil that is the culprit. I measured the distance between the strut housing on each end of the coil and the left side has about .5 inches of space less than the right side. That is why I think it looks to be sagging on the left side and jacked up in the right rear if that makes sense. Not to mention the rear coils seem to have the same amount of space between the top of the coil housing and bottom. Is there anyway to determine exactly why it sits cockeyed? I don't want to replace all 4 coil springs just to find out I only needed 1 coil spring.

 

Thanks for the help.

 

Shocks are easy to replace, and have nothing to do with the way the vehicle sits, so they're unrelated to the issue you're seeing.

 

If you want to verify that the problem is indeed with your FL coil spring, you could do one of several things:

1) swap the FL for the FR coil spring. If the sagging switches to the FR side, then it's definitely the front coil spring. It's sort of labor-intensive, though.

2) get just ONE front coil spring, swap the old FL spring for a newer (used) one. Maybe someone from this forum or the 4x4parts forum who has installed the AC lift has their old springs taking up space on the garage floor...

3) replace both front springs with new or pre-owned OEM springs, one at a time, to see if there's an improvement. (Start by replacing the FL spring before spending the time on the FR spring.)

 

No need to touch the rear coil springs for now.

[ronin152]

Don't quote me on this but I thought I read somewhere that pathfinders tend to lean in towards the left because of the gas tank or something else up front to make it lean that way?

[mora2818]

Good call on trying to see if anyone has a Front Coil or 2 laying around, I didn't even think of that. Hopefully I'll just replace the bad one when replacing the struts up front. I am highly debating on whether to just pay to have the struts put it in or tackling it myself. Sounds easy, just a pain. Thanks for the writeup on that by the way. It makes it so much easier for guys like me to tackle the weekend repair/maintenance job.

 

That being said, does anyone have a Front Coil laying around that I can grab from them?