doodfood

Hi, I just wanted some advice on how to compress and possibly remove the front springs and upper control arms on an XE or XF Falcon.

I have a Gregorys manual which says that a special Ford spring compressor tool is required to do the job, this tool allows you to remove the shock while the spring is still on the car, lower the tool into the place where the shock used to be and compress the spring while its still in the car. I rang Ford up but they say they won't sell special tools to the public.

As an alternative I was hoping it would be possible to use general spring compressors to compress the spring while its still in the car, enough to allow removal of the upper control arm. Is this possible, it doesn't look like there's enough room around the spring to fit a spring compressor in there, even with the bump stop plate removed?

Is there any other way to do this job, I'm assuming the whole strut can't just be removed and then be compressed and dismantled outside the car as is possible with some other cars?

Also, I have some XF upper control arms with good ball joints that I want to stick into an XE that has shot joints, will the arms just transfer over or am I better off drilling out the rivets in the XE and XF and just transfering across the ball joints?

mattlea1

I have removed a lot of springs from XA-XF Falcons and it can be done with standard spring compressors when you remove the bump stop plate it is tight but it does fit but DONT use cheap compressors as standard Falcon springs are massive and cheap compressors can and most probably will snap.
As far as the ball joints are concerned mate do yourself a favour new ones are only about $20 or $30 buy new ones.

venomXR6

if its ball joints that your stressing about leave the springs alone. yes you do need the ford spring compressor. and mattlea1 your frng game using normal spring compressors. anyway to do the balljoints you do not need to remove the spring just drill out the rivets cheers

mattlea1

Mate im sure there are a lot of peole out there who use normal spring compressors to remove them but if you use a quality set what is the problem ???

fairmont1998

I've also used normal spring compressors on an XD with out any trouble. They fit in there and get a good grip on the spring. I'm fully aware of the energy contained in a compressed spring and wouldn't do it if I thought it was dangerous.

__________________

1998 EL Fairmont 5.0 V8.
Low, Loud. How a Ford should be.

Rhett

I think lowered springs are harder to compress then standard ones. I'm not sure what doodfood is running. I've had cheap compressors bend badly on me but not break. Now I use the ones that have 2 fingers at each end for grabbing the coil, (also less likely to want to slide down the coil).