Help required - Coilovers

[Donald_MacIver]

I have just taken delivery of a set of coilovers for my 1997 A4 1.9tdi. I expected them to be built-up complete units, but they have arrived in seperate boxes. I have never had coilovers before, so i am a little un-sure about how they actually fit to the car. The seller supplied the following image:

The kit i received looks identical to the one in the image above. However, i always thought that coilover kits were complete units and were always built up ready to fit to your car. Am i supposed to just re-use the strut tops that are on my car in order to fit these coilovers? Should i replace the strut tops with new ones?

Any help or guidance would be appreciated.

 

[Siena]

Hi Donald, it'll be a lot easier if you took some pictures of how your kit arrived.

Different manufacturer's supply their kits in varying formats, so it's difficult to give a direct answer that may or may not relate to what you've got.

 

[Donald_MacIver]

Hi Siena,

the image in my initial thread is of an actual A4 B5 kit as confirmed by the supplier. The individual shocks arrived in seperate boxes, and the 4 springs were just loose in the box. I am just wandering if there should be new strut tops supplied or not, and whether these springs will work ok withmy existing strut tops?

 

[diesel-a4]

we need pics of the ones sitting on your floor the ones that postie brought

 

[Siena]

we need pics of the ones sitting on your floor the ones that postie brought

That's exactly what I meant.

 

[Broken Byzan]

Both sets i have bought i was expected to use the old top mounts, but the new supplied nuts for the tops, the bottom bolt usually has a spacer you use to space them to fit the axle

 

[jcb]

I would be very ****** off if my new coilover set arrived with no new spring cap/top mount.
bearing in mind the springs are not OEM they are unlikely to match up exactly.
My KWv3's arrives as yours did, just a packing issue really, but the spring caps/mounts were in the box.

I would contact the manufacturer and double check that is how they send them out.

 

[aragorn]

The standard A4 dampers are "coilovers" in so far as the coil is over the shock. All your adding is the adjustable lower platform.

They also dont look like a particularly expensive kit, so unlike your KWv3's they'll try to reuse as much of the original setup as possible to keep the costs down... An example of this from the images is that they have used standard tapered A4 sized springs, rather than the 2.5 or 2.25" parallel springs that most high end coilover kits are supplied with.

Its really up to you to replace things like the top mounts if you wish, or reuse the stock parts.