Lowering
 

Can someone give me a no bullshit assessment of lowering the back end. Is it easy enough to do?

I'm confident enough with the spanners, but I've never done it before (obviously). Anything I should look out for?

Torsion bars being seized solid

Take your time get a old torsion bar and cut it in half and use that to hit the bars out with, easy enough the hardest part is if you have a problem and you don't know the solution.

No such thing mate just use a bigger hammer and a few man hours.

Hit the torsion bar out? I was going to pull them out using a bolt, tube and washer. Am I missing something or am I lost before starting?

Dont forget to be liberal with the gt40. ;)

Pulling them out with a bolt and socket is useless mate.

im far from a mechanic but quite handy with spanners and id say it is do able, just a bit of a ball ache and quite time consuming. Read up alot on how to do it. Its very straight forward the concept of it

I 2nd this. As far as im aware its 2 seperate bars, ie one for each side, hence the reason they have to be pulled out. So how does the 'hit them out' method work?

pulling them out will either snap the bolt inside the torsion bar, or strip the threads out the torsion bar. If you remove the torx screws and washers from both ends of the torsion bar, you can hit them out with a metal pole. Make sure you wind a bolt in the end before you start hammering them as youll just make a mess of the end of the torsion bar.

I did a torsion bar the other day (2nd one ive done now), and safely say a bolt and washer method to pull the passenger side bar out would have been like pissing in the wind frankly.. it took a good hour of constant beating with a lump hammer to push it out

Soak in WD40 or any other penetrating fluid the night before should ease the removal of the torsion bars.

im fair competant with most mechanics but doing it on your own is a cunt get a mate to help makes it so much easier

in the past ive always just got krisb to do it for like £60-70. Saves all the blood and tears

Thanks for the info lads, I'm getting a better picture of what I need to do now. I didn't want to start and not have a good idea of what I needed to do.

So in my mind this is how it's going to go after jacking the car up and wheels off:

Remove the end plate
Remove the torx bolt and washer
Get stuck into the area with some WD
Put a bolt in the end of the bar
Whack the torsion bar out

Set the ride hight then replace the bar

Right, if the above is correct then happy days.

Any trick to refitting the bar? Also someone mentioned replacing the bearings and seals.

Yeah thats about right
Disconnect the damper aswel. A good trick to get the arb is to wind the top damper bolt in there to prize it apart.
Also keep an eye out that you don't knock the whole trailing arm off. The bar will refit a certain way as the splines would have changed position slightly. Just have to turn it one spline at a time till you find it fits in

I got to the point where i had to remove the full axle from the car and bray the torsion bar out with a sledge hammer. believe me it can be solid

Your hammer was too small. There is always a bigger hammer.

Mick did you have a crack at it then? I'm gonna give mine a shot shortly and wanted to know how you got on?