Do these Wheeler's assembled shocks look normal?

I just received assembled shocks from Wheeler's Offroad. They are Bilstein 5100s set at the lowest clip with the Wheelers/Eibach 620lb coil springs. The top strut mount looks crooked and the coil spring is almost contacting the shock. It's like this on both shocks. Is this a concern, or is this normal?

 

I'm sorry, not laughing at you and completely sympathize. Welcome to the Wheeler's/TrailGear/AllPoo club.

To answer your question, it IS a concern and it is NOT normal at all. IT IS poor quality work and lazy assembly. How I know?

I received nearly the same from Wheeler's although it shipped out of Fresno (aka Trail Gear). They didn't bother with the trim packer I had ordered, instead they shipped it seperately. The assembler didn't take their time and instead rushed through it. Their customer service has gone to crap, my advice - stay away from them. What's the point having them assemble if they can't get it right?





You can either disassemble them and reassemble yourself or pay a local shop to do it. If doing it yourself, do make sure you use a heavy duty compressor. None of those widow maker rentable autozone compressors. It's just not worth the risk.

I guess you can always call them up and demand they do them correctly. There is no reason at all why they shouldn't provide a return ship label and eat that cost. Any decent company would.

If you do call them, tell em' I said

 

That looks like complete dog shat.

 

Doesn't really matter. As soon as you bolt that plate to the shock tower it straightens out

 

They should be find once they get some weight on them and get broke in.

 

Other than its going to be misaligned and likely a pain in the ass to get that lower shock mount bolt installed. In my case it wasn't assembled correctly and if I tried to install as is, I would've had to use a metal rod (OEM lug wrench fits perfectly) to rotate the shock body in order to line it up with the mount. Not something ya want to do.

When you pay for assembly, you expect it to be done correctly. We spend a nice bit of coin on our components... most of us know better to not install something that isn't assembled correctly and leave it to chance that its going to be OK. Pass. Do it right the first time or don't do it at all.

Wheeler's OffRoad, Trail Gear, All Pro, Low-Range are too happy to take your cash and could give two ducks about their quality. No thx. Pass on trusting them to do the job right. Either do it yourself or pay someone local to do it.

 

I'm pretty sure rotating the shock body is going to happen no matter what... there's literally no way to ensure that it's aligned perfectly unless they're assembling on a Tacoma and removing it, then somehow locking it during shipping and somehow not having any variation on your receiving truck.

Zooming out, what else would you do? Top spacer is installed correctly, top hat is installed correctly. The coil sits to one side because of the taper cut.. once there's compression as @b_r_o mentioned, it'll all straighten out

 

There’s no way I would install that.

 

You line up the top hat in the correct orientation when assembling you won't need to rotate the shock body. Why/how would you "lock" it? Once you uncompress the compressor after assembly, it's under such immense pressure, no way in hell is it going to move during shipping. Unless I'm not reading what you wrote correctly

You hold the bottom portion of the shock body as you are compressing it to ensure the top hat doesn't shift on the spacer/top washer as you compress the spring. They didn't do that. They cranked it down and then zipped it up with the impact once the top nut was on. It wasn't lined up correctly. There was also enough of a gap on the lower seat to make me say WTF were you thinking trailgear tech?

So to answer your question, I would've done it right the first time which in the future is exactly what will happen. Will never trust those clowns to assemble anything. The fact the op received a very similar shoddy assembly tells me they have a problem with one or more of their techs as well as a QA issue before shipping it out the door. I mean hell, in my case I ordered a trim packer with assembly and they don't even bother to do it instead just toss it into the box - not just once, but twice? lol wtf man.


*in my case, they had the f-ing top hat rotated about 20 degress past the above point

 

I've done about 4 of these installs and they can be rotated by a strong hand.. certainly not something I would complain about not being dialed in. If you ordered something to be installed and it wasn't, I get that, but nothing here seems to indicate they installed anything improperly or not at all.

 

Did you reassemble it yet? I might have some spring compressors that work with these coils. Never tried it but it's a slimmer design than the AutoZone rentals.

 

Not sure what they could do differently to make it line up better. Or get the shock more centered with the coil spring vs almost touching it. I've assembled several dozen coilovers for Tacomas. Sometimes they don't line up perfect, depending on the combo.

Installed and with the vehicle on the ground, I bet it looks a lot better. Or return and go for a different set up. If you ask for the same combo, you will likely get the same result.

 

All good bud, thanks for the offer. Was able to get the job done using this style of compressor. Took a couple of tries to understand exactly how to line it up but its correct now. Aside from the wall mount or a cart mount, this was the only portable I was willing to trust. If I was able to do it with a portable, no reason it couldn't have been done correctly with a professional compressor by someone paid to do it all day.

What I used -




Ideal but costly -

$905 Branick 7600 Strut Spring Compressor

Branick 7600 w/mobile cart


A neighbor had an old style OTC which simply would not come close to fitting the coils, tried and tried but just couldn't get it to hook on to the coils.


Also tried another old one he had and that was utter crap since it was completely flat at the bottom. You'd have to shim the coil and I just didn't feel it was safe enough. Looked like this but again, it was quite a bit older and the bottom mount was not offset.

 

@cmanson3, what happened with you? Did you call them on it and if so, outcome?

 

I own a

$905 branick 7600 strut spring compressor

branick 7600. Truly the best way to do it.

The last one you pictured I completely bent on the first use of doing 6112 bilstein. No one should buy that thing.

 

If I knew I'd use it often enough, I absolutely would have that Branick. Yeah, that last one was utter crap. Apparently my neighbor had it leftover from his auto mechanic school days. It was one of the first specialty tools he had bought. Maybe would be fine for an old school 80s honda but now, nope - no way. I should've taken a picture of it lol.

 

Haha. Yeah Tacoma coils actually require quite a bit of force to compress. I have the branick at home for my side jobs. At my day job (mechanic) I'll typically use the spring compressor you ended up using. They work pretty good.

 

@Area51Runner I sent them an email and this was their reply. I was considering installing them but I'm getting mixed feedback here

 

any update how things turned out? I'm thinking of ordering pre-assembled coils from wheelers