RalliTEK

Rally tech. No roads required. Today I've got a 2021 Cross Trek 2. 5 Sport in the shop. We're going to be doing a whole bunch of suspension work to it. We're going to start by removing a 1. 5 inch lift if you want it to go bigger. So we've got our 2 inch lift going on. We've got 1 inch raised springs, 1 inch prototype overload springs, rally tech control arms, rally tech trailing arms, and Bilstein B6s. So we're going to start working on that and we'll show So the first step that I do on cars here at the shop is I'll actually remove the top pat nuts for the rear. So to do that, you've got to pull these styrofoam pieces up. Just gently pry. There's plastic clips that actually hold them in. So gently pry on that. Be sure you don'tear the styrofoam. And there's these panels that sit right here. You just pop that out and you expose your two nuts on the passenger side and the same on the driver'side. Just get your 14 millimeter socket out. We're going to start taking the front strut out. This is the tools I've got my electric ratchet. You don't need an electric ratchet, but I You'll need a 19 millimeter. I've got a nice flex head gear wrench for popping the strut bolts loose. Then you've got a 19 socket, 10, 12, and then a 14. The 10 will be used for the ABS sensor. It's free. It's loose. You don't have to worry about it. You've got your 12 millimeter. T And on most cars, you'll also see me grab a 17. That 17 is going to be for the sway bar. The 14, t I use a shallow one just to make sure I don't mess up the plastic with the deep socket or anyt I have enough room with that. You'll see I've got a flat head screwdriver, a small punch, and my dead blow. The flat head screwdriver helps me take t I just basically squeeze it and then just pry the little tabs down so I can pull that out. Then the punch and the dead blow just help me get these bolts out. So I'll start by taking the ABS sensor out of the hub. Sometimes they're a little tricky, but if you actually take your screwdriver and tap right here, just with your hand, you'll just break it loose and then it should just pull right out. If the ABS sensor is free, then I'll just use my fingers to squeeze the big tabs in the screwdriver for the small ones. That comes free. It's out of the equation, don't need to worry about it. So I'll take over my 12 millimeter. The brake hose is free. I'll just start working on the strut bolts. Take the tip on 19. Let's break them loose. One t What t So you've got to make sure that goes back on the top. And I'll typically just lift up on the rotor a little bit. See if there's the top bolt. T You can see the eccentric on it right there. That goes in the top. For the bottom bolt, sometimes I get lucky, sometimes not. I'll take my punch. Pull it out. Just leave it just So now the strut's totally free from the knuckle. T So I'll take my ratchet, my 14. And what I'll do is actually step up here, start loosening my bolts. I Set them in a place that's easy to get to. So I'll usually pull the back tube nuts off of it, because the front is a lot easier to get to. So then with my right hand, I actually grab the spring. I'll hold the strut. Use my left hand to get the top nut off. Set that down out of there. And pull your strut out. Do the same t You'll have both front struts out of your car. Alright, so you pulled your front struts out. You threw them around. You mixed them up. You don't know what side is what anymore. I'm going to tell you how to determine what side is what side on your strut. So the t It's got the nut on it. So you want that to go to the back of the car. So that's going to the back of the car in t So you want to grab the top hat spacer. It looks The passenger side is going to have a yellow dot right there. That's the driver'side. And we'll just tighten it down. So here we got it. It's built. We've got a Bilstein strut, new rally tech spring, two inch top hat spacer here. It's all on the correct side. So the next step is you go take it on the car. Now we're at the car. The installation of the strut is the exact opposite as when you removed it. What I'll step up on my lift and then I'll get the top nuts on. Alright, so I've got the strut sitting on the knuckle. I'll use my left hand and grab the spring and basically lift up. And then use my right hand to help align the top hat into the hole. I'll start the nuts to make sure you don't lose, you don't drop the strut down in there. Then once you're started, tighten these guys down. So that works for now. I'll get them torqued when we get the car set down. One t You want to make sure that points to the front of the ve And then the RT logo goes to the fender. So continuation is to exactly the opposite. So I'll start with the knuckle bolts. It's typically a little easier to line up. Maybe. There we go. You get, it's the straight bolt. The head of the bolt goes from the back of the car to the front of the car. Sometimes you need a little bit of help to get it all the way in. Just Now you take your centric bolt. What I Goes in just Your nuts, again the bottom one, will get just enough. We don't need to tighten these right now. Top one gets the washer on it first. And then the nut. We just leave it loose what I And once they're all started, I'll go by and tighten everyt Put that back in there. Now on the brake hose. Same the bolt goes from the bottom. I'll make sure on there we go. We just grab your 10 millimeter, your 12 millimeter, tighten those down, and then I'll show you how to tighten down the knuckle bolts. So when we tighten the knuckle bolts, I So right now I have it in full positive. So what I'll do is I'll just turn t Yeah, it's kind of somewhere, somewhere And then I'll tighten it down. These, I'm not going torque right away because we've got, we're on an alignment rack, so I'll be doing that right, right away. At home, you're taking it to an alignment shop. You want to tighten these bolts, torque them down to 116 foot pounds per side. And just All right, the front end is back on the ground. It's not settled, so it looks pretty tall here, but it's done. Let's move on to the rear. So now we're on to the rear of the car. The tools are going to walk for the rear is they're going to want a 17 end wrench. I Then I've got a 17 socket on my electric ratcheting end. I also have again, I've got a punch and my dead blow. We're going to start by taking these bolts off. So that one goes up into the subframe. That's for your strut. We've already removed the top pad nuts. So with these two out, I can drop the strut and everyt Since we're doing the control arm as well, t We will remove that bolt as well. So we'll pull the whole control arm out. One thing that we've found here is on these cars, the sway bar mounts to the chassis of the car instead of the subframe, So it attaches to to pull that, you just need a 14 millimeter, pop it off. You can do one end link or both end links. That way it just allows everyt Grab my little punch. Be sure you're not damaging the threads, but let's give that bolt a few taps. You pull it out. Just pull down You'll notice the strut's coming down with you. Pop the strut bolt out. That's what comes out. There's that. Since we're doing the control arm as well, pull that out. Ready to go to the other side. All right, so we also need to pull down t You've got on there's a bolt on t So the bolts are 12 millimeter, so you just get your 12 millimeter socket out. The clips, you'll see me use a fancy clip tool, but a t So let's go ahead and start taking it down. So start taking the plastic clips out. And there's one more clip on t And the one at the back. And down it comes. All right, so we've got the subframe drop installed. Now we're going to move on to the lower control arms. So here's a factory control arm. It'stamped steel. T It's used on the outbacks and the foresters and even the WX STI as well. Well, people bend these. You'll I've even seen them break. It doesn't work for us. So we've got our rally tech adjustable one. It's made out of 316th steel. It's got a So you don't have the Heim joint. You don't have any knocking around. We've got a Zerk fitting on it. So you can grease it if it does start to make a little bit of noise. And you've got an adjuster on here. So you can fix your camber problems with t It's going to be stronger. It's going to last longer. You're going to really enjoy t So because t You see there, there's not nearly enough threads actually be strong. So what we do is we will take what originally mounted the shock to the control arm, w It's a lot longer. Put it through there. You've got plenty of threads right there. So it's going to be nice and strong. There's enough not going to back off on you. Super simple. You put it up there. The bolt goes from the front of the car to the back of the car. Just put it in It'll use the factory nut. You just start it just to make sure that it's not going to fall off the car on you. So next step is you take your strut. Just You put it up in place. Sometimes it's helpful to have a buddy at the top to put the nuts on. Just to hold it, help hold it here. You just kind of use my head literally. That bolt through. Put it up in place T Just All you got to do is put your nuts on. Tighten everyt You want to leave it a little bit loose before you set it on the ground so that way you can torque everyt And when the suspension is settled, you report all three of these bolts to 89 foot-pounds. So t Since we use the original one for there in that spot, we give you a longer bolt there so you can tighten it down. T All right, so the rear suspension is pretty much buttoned up. We have our control arms on. It starts back in place. T We've got our two inch spacer up on top and we got our subframe spacers installed. Somet The reason for that is the kit that we pulled off gets rid of the factory subframe spacer and that is needed in our kit. Our spacers are pretty close to the same height. So I just pulled another set of four off the shelf and we're good to go. All right, so next up what we're going to do is we're going to swap out the trailing arms. So we have a set of trailing arms that just showed up for they're a lot stronger. These They probably would break as well. What you need to do to take these off is you need a 17 for there and there. And then up in here there's t We're going to pull these off real fast and I'll show you how to get it out of there. So if the bolts are a little tricky to get out Sometimes you need a little persuasion from a punch as well. Typically you only need to get one out because once you pull this side off this bolt's loose and it'll come right out just So I've got the rally tech trailing arm here on the bench and I have it set up to the factory length. The easiest way that I know to do that is to take your factory trailing arm and put your bolts in it, set it So t You typically don't need to adjust the trailing arm on t So you'ready to install it now. If your car is It's pretty easy to manipulate back into place but it does take a little bit of work. So you might want to have your trusty mallet to help it. So I'm not quite lined up right now. The knuckle still needs to go back a little bit more. The spring is kind of keeping everyt Let's take my punch from earlier. What I Once you get it started you can tap it through with your mallet. I'm still a little bit off so you're just going to have to work at it just a little bit to get it lined up so the bolts can go through the hole. Sometimes to help line up bolts I So what I did was I hooked on where the sway bar mounts to on the knuckle and then I went up to one of the holes in the subframe and I just gave it just a little bit and the bolt goes right in the hole. So I really enjoy using ratchet straps and stuff It allows me to get bolts lined up that wouldn't normally be able to get lined up. So we are done. So I'll make the rear. We've got the subframe installed w The control arms are in, trailing arms are in, struts are in, top-hat spacers are in. So the next step before we do the alignment is torque all the bolts. So these three bolts are going torque the 89 foot-pounds on the trailing arm. Top and bottom those get torqued to 67 foot-pounds. We'll get those done real fast and then we'll get the alignment going. Just going through right now and just tightening everyt So those are all my 17s. I'm going to flip over to the strut bolt w Okay, so I'll grab my torque wrench and set it to 89 foot-pounds. So there's all my 89 foot-pounds. So we'll go down to 67. So line is all done. I'm happy with it. We're going to go drive around the lock and verify that the steering wheel is straight and everyt One of the last t So what you want to do is make sure that t Sometimes t What you can do is raise the car up, basically let the suspension drop to full droop, and then t So just remember you want the jam nut tight to what you don't want to move. So the control arm has threads in it so that has to be tight to the control arm. The adjuster has threads on it so you need to get that jam nut tight to the adjuster.