[GH85Carrera]

Phew, and golly gee whiz.

The new shocks are on. It reaffirmed why I hate to have anyone else work on my car. One of the tasks that is a chore, is the replacement of the a-arm bushings. It requires a HUGE spring compressor, and lots of effort. I was really busy when the task was due. I took it to a local good shop. They whipped it out in a day. To get the a-arms off, the shocks come off. So my perfectly torqued to spec fittings were removed. The shop monkey helper or someone there was more interested in making the book time, and they never did get the shocks really torqued down. And as a bonus, and likely part of the torque issue, they stripped one shock on the top, and one on the bottom.

I had to Dremel off the top of the strut on the passenger side. The bottom connections on the driver's side were all buggered up, and only one bolt would even come out. The other bolt on the driver's side broke the spring nut. I had to rig up some bent needle nose vice grips through the spring to hold it well enough to get it to back out. Both bolts looked like they were cross threaded. Arghhh.

I had to clean up, take my wife's car to NAPA, get replacement kinda sorta the same replacement. They were a little longer and required some bench grinder time. It is all back together and the top and bottom are torqued. The top bolt that hold the shock strut in place is a 17 mm nut, but the center of the strut has a fitting for a 5 mm allen wrench. So hold the strut with the allen and turn the nut a 1/4 turn at a time. It is lots of fun.

The top is torqued to 96 inch pounds, the bottom bolts are torqued to 240 inch pounds.

My 911 was under the car cover, on the battery maintainer. It was easier to take her car.

The old shocks were installed 14 years ago, and only had 146,000 miles on them.