Bluey's esCarpade Adventure: Suspension fitted

The 2024 Camp Quality esCarpade is now less than six weeks away!! Today, Damian figured it was a good day to swap out the tired, standard suspension in Bluey with his fancy heavy-duty, raised suspension that had previously been removed from Retro Rock-It!

First up - start with the easy ones - the rear suspension. Car up on jack-stands, with a trolley jack under the diff to raise and lower as required.

And voila! The first spring is removed... Jacking up the diff to compress the spring, Damian then fitted some spring compressors to hold it there, and lowered the jack again. Out it came!

Reversing the process, the heavy-duty spring and shock absorber was fitted...

Too quick you say? Here's the spring compressors on the driver's side spring ready to remove it.

Then onto the heavy duty spring ready to install it!

Another spring and shock successfully fitted!

And an immediate boost in ride height!

The front springs were a complete pain in the dot to remove from Retro Rock-It... Here's the before picture of the front ride height for Bluey.

After doing a bit more research, Damian found that by undoing these four nuts in the engine bay, the whole upper control arm can just be swung out of the way!

Before nuts undone...

After!

Oh boy did that make the process so much simpler than removing the control arm from the ball joint! Driver's side reassembled... Damian did need to borrow his older son Aidan to help push the lower control arm down a bit to get the spring out then back in again, but honestly, this was so easy!

And the immediate difference in ride height on the front...

Of course, the driver's side nuts were soooo easy to reach, Damian may have been lulled into a false sense of security... the passenger side nuts were buried under a pile of wires, manifolds, pipes, hoses and disappointment!

Undoing nuts is a slow process when you can get about 1/8th of a turn at a time!

Needless to say, the job was completed, and everything was hunky dory in the end! Damian took the opportunity to throw a couple of cable ties on the UHF coax to keep it out of harms way...

Damian's younger son Jordan decided to help by partially installing the light bar onto the bullbar.

The nuts were only finger-tight, so Damian figured tightening them was in order!

The lovely Tricia was in the passenger seat on camera duties so Damian could have a quick test drive of Bluey with the swapped out suspension... Jordan waved them off! Cheers!!

The test drive was from the shed down the side driveway, dropping down into the back paddock onto the arena, a quick 180 then back up the hill, out of the paddock, past Tricia's lady cave (aka horse shed) and back up the side driveway to the shed again!