El Paso Tools spring compressor review

[rwthomas1]

I bought one the El Paso Tools spring compressors on Ebay to do the suspension work on my '84 300D. It works well but not without a few pitfalls. It works great on the rear springs. No problems at all. The front springs however can be a challenge. The main problem I encountered was the thickest section of the jackscrew assembly wouldn't fit through the hole in the sheetmetal/spring pocket accessed from the engine bay. I don't know if this was a peculiarity with my car as it almost fit and a very slight misalignment when the car body was being welded up may have caused this. In the pic you will see a file. A few minutes removing about 1/64" all around the hole allowed the jackscrew to drop right in. I primed and topcoated the area when I was all done for rust prevention. The second issue is the metal disks that slip into the spring to compress it are a tight fit. A good shove or rap with a hammer and they pop right in. Since the suspension is in full extension the spring is slightly curved. This makes inserting the disks tough so you must pop them in on the straight section and then twist them down to the lowest/highest point possible to get maximum compression. Getting the disks back out requires the reverse process and then they can be grabbed with Channellocks and jerked out of the spring. Not too big a deal on any of these issues but you might want to know that you may have to get creative to use the El Paso tool. IMHO, this is not enough of a reason to purchase the more expensive SIR or Klann version. The El Paso is plenty strong and compresses the springs pretty effortlessly right to coil bind if you want. Hope this helps, RT