Fitting rear bump stops

The key to a good suspension set up is balance and stability. Over stretching in any direction achieves very little. Ok so the vehicle may seem to have amazing "articulation" but if the tyres are not generating traction (ie pressing on the ground) it does not matter how far they have stretched to touch the ground. Bump stops are a way of protecting the suspension from over compression on one side and the tyres from rubbing inside the wheel arch. Therefore, with a new set of springs and shock I also have gone for bump stop extensions 

Dave over at Bits4Vits does a great set of turned aluminium bump stop extensions, these arrived nice and promptly in the week. The bump stop extenders are threaded to take the old bump stops and to screw into the original mounting position.

As the old bump stops have been on the car and in the wet and mud since 2003 I anticipated that the old stops might be a bit corroded into position. Therefore I sprayed the mounts with penetrating fluid regularly whilst waiting for the postman to arrive. The bumpstops consist of a rubber cone with a hexagonal base. In theory you could use a 60mm A/F spanner across the base to undo it. However, who has a 60mm spanner around? Instead I used a plumbers pipe wrench and the bump stops came off nice and easily. 

As they say, re-assembly is simply the reverse process. I coated all the threads with thread locker and then screwed the old stops into the extenders. I then screwed the extenders into the mount and tightened the whole lot with the pipe wrench using the flats on the stops for grip.