I had awful trouble trying to get the springs back into the front of the car. the problem is that with spring clamps attached, the spring won't fit as the clamps get in the way. If I just put the spring in without any clamps and jack up the lower control arm, there is too much of an angle between the bottom of the spring and the control arm for it to get any purchase and it just slides out.

I finally came up with a solution. The lower control arm has a hole in it inside the spring seating area, so it occurred to me that I might be able to fit the spring clamp from the inside.

All the usual "Be careful with springs" warnings apply here. Springs can store enormous amounts of energy which, when released, can cause a lot of damage to you and/or your car. They should be treated with a great deal of respect. Position yourself in the least likely path of an escaping spring. Use long bars/sticks to poke at stuff rather than your soft and valuable fingers!

So, here's what I did.

The spring has a right way up. One end finishes in a short straight section, the other end finishes in the normal curve of the spring as you can see in the photos below.



So, if you fit just 1 spring clamp from the inside of the spring so that it is acting on the side of the spring which faces towards the centre of the car, the spring will bow outwards opposite the site of the clamp:



with the spring bent like this, there's a much more favourable angle between the bottom of the spring and its seat on the lower control arm.


It is then possible to lift the control arm with a jack, compressing the spring. I used a trolley jack positioned so that it could roll out from under the car as the control arm end moved outwards. There's a critical point where the spring clamp has to be removed because if you compress the spring too much, it will "hold on" to the spring clamp. Once the clamp is out, you can compress as much as is required to prop the control arm allowing access to connect the kingpin and fix the whole assembly.





It took me hours to come up with this cunning plan, but I got the second side done in about 30 mins!