Driver's Side:

(1) Loosen the 5 wheel lugs on each wheel, jack the car up, and take the front wheels off.

(2) Place a jackstand or floor jack (preferable) underneath the control arm. This is because when you remove the strut from the housing, the control arm (including the rotor and brake caliper) will drop and you don't want it to slam into the ground and tear off your brake line. If you use a floor jack, you can then slowly lower the control arm down.
 

Remove the 16mm bolt that attaches the front sway bar to the control arm

Remove 18mm lower strut mounting bolt, using an 18mm open-ended wrench to counter hold the nut (not visible in the picture below).

Un-snap the ABS speed-sensor cables from the strut mounting thingys.

Prepare the Spreader Tool. By this, I mean make sure you have one. Some have said this job is possible without one, but I dare you to try. I did, and ended up postponing the entire install for a week while I waited for mine to arrive from Autotech.

Why do you need this magical tool? Because the strut mount is extremely tight, and the only way to get it to the point where you can remove the strut is by spreading it (i.e. prying) apart using the tool. The tool is basically a 7mm allen wrench bit that's been ground down to be more oval shaped. You pop it in the gap in the strut mount, twist, and BAM ... out comes the strut.

Update: Several folks have mentioned that as an alternative to this tool, you can use a 1/4-inch slotted screwdriver bit in a 1/4 ratchet drive. Not tried personally, but sounds like it'd be a good solution.

Insert the spreader tool and rotate (spread) as shown above.
 

With the Spreader Tool in place, lower the floor jack that's underneath the control arm a bit and give the arm a whack with a mallet. Not too hard -- if you've used the Spreader Tool properly, the strut should fairly easily come loose.

Post whack above.

Lower the floor jack further, until you can remove strut from the mount.

Ok, time to take the strut out.  Pop the hood, and remove the strut cap. You should see the 21mm outer nut, as pictured.

You have several options for getting this 21mm nut off. The difficulty with this step lies with the fact that a simple socket won’t work here because the entire strut (including the stop plate) will rotate if you just try to pop it off with a standard 21mm socket. There are three options here, as indicated in the above tools section:

(1) An impact gun. One or two blips with an air-powered impact gun will do the trick. This is probably the easiest (but most expensive) way to get this done. I couldn’t convince myself to blow $500 on a set of air tools for this one job, however, so I didn’t do this.

(2) There’s a part from Potterman’s called the "Strut Nut Tool (Top)". It looks like this:

It’s basically a 21mm socket with a hole through the middle for you to stick an allen wrench into the strut, and a nice hex-shaped portion for you to grab with your favourite torque-inducing object (i.e. pliers/vice grips/adjustable wrench). This allen wrench sticks into the middle of the strut, and can be used to hold the whole unit while you loosen the nut. Note that the average 13/16 spark plug socket may work for this purpose as well if you can’t get a hold of the special tool.

(3) This is the method I used: There's a German tool manufacturer called Stahlwille that makes a set of 60-degree deep-offset wrenches. These wrenches in particular happen to be the right size/angle to fit into the well around the top nut and can be used quite successfully to get it off in combination with an allen wrench. Someone suggested this method to me, so this is why I did it. Part #s can be found above.

Once the stop plate is off, you can then lower the floor jack below (see? told you it would be a good idea to use one...) and take out the entire strut assembly.

Since I only purchased new Upper Strut Mounts and didn't get new Upper Strut Bearings (yet), I needed to take apart the old strut assembly to re-use some parts. The next few steps are only necessary if you need to those two parts. Attach the spring compressor.

Now it's time for the fun part -- to assemble your coilovers! Take all the parts out of the box and make sure you have everything shown below (for each side). The pieces are, from left to right and top to bottom: 22mm (NOTE: not a direct replacement, as the OEM part is 21mm) outer nut, spring plate, helper spring, separator thingy, dust cover, main spring, and, of course, the coilover body.

The first step is to make sure you're properly lubed up (isn't it always?). Since you're probably going to be adjusting the height of these things, it's best to coat the threaded body with some anti-seize lubricant to make your life easier. Remember, these things are going to faced with salt, water, dirt, etc., so keeping things greased can always help. I applied it by moving the two height-adjustment pieces to opposite ends of the body, applying a thin layer of grease, and spinning one piece to the other side.

It's easiest to assemble the pieces if you set the coilover to its lowest possible setting (all the way down). Put on the dust boot, the helper spring, the separator thingy, the upper spring, the new spring plate, the aluminium spacer, and the strut bearing, in that order.

Then, place the upper strut mount on, attach the old 21mm inner nut, tighten to 44-ft-lb (as the Bentley suggests) and LISTEN IN HORROR AS YOU HEAR YOUR $^%@%$! UPPER STRUT BEARING CRACK INTO MANY PIECES.

Ok, so the lesson here is that the Bentley's suggestion of 44ft-lbs is wrong when dealing with a new suspension setup. Use a torque wrench, and tighten to something less than 44ft-lbs (I'd suggest 30 - 35, but I don't have an exact number).

Update: Someone very wisely pointed out that the reason 44 ft-lbs cracked the bearing is the presence of the aluminium spacer. Supposedly if you don't have the spacer there, you should be fine to tighten to full torque spec and all should be well. Duly noted.

Once you've got the whole thing assembled, it's time to install this puppy back in the car. I chose to raise the height from the lowest position to the highest position, so that I could then lower the car as desired (I didn't know how low I wanted to go, so I figured I'd start high and work my way down.)

The first problem I ran into was the discovery that the H&R coilover body is a hair thicker than the stock strut. This means that with the spreader tool still in place, the coilover won't seat properly in the strut mount.
 

What I needed was a way of getting the spreader tool to spread just a bit more. The solution I settled on was to a) insert the coilover as far as it can go, b) remove the spreader tool, and c) wedge a nickel in between the spreader tool and the lower strut mount to get that extra few mm of separation. This worked, and the coilover popped right in.

With the coilover properly seated, install the lower strut mounting bolt and tighten the nut to 44 ft-lbs + 1/4 turn.
 

(1) Repeat steps 1 - 5 above.

(2) With your adjustable jack placed under the control arm (as on the other side), jack up the control arm so that the spring becomes compressed.

(3) Now, attach the spring compressor to the already compressed spring and tighten. This will hold the spring in place. This may be a bit tricky, as the spring compressor might be a tight fit (you may have to install it upside down depending on what model you have).

(4) With the spring nicely compressed, follow steps 6 - 8 above.

(5) The strut should be loose -- but not out of the assembly. Now, jump to step 10 and do that and step 11.

(6) You should now be in a situation where the strut is detached from the top and loose from the lower strut mount. Don't lower your jack quite yet. Next thing you'll do is perform step 14 while the strut is still in the car.

(7) Once the inner nut is removed, you should be able to remove all the "extra stuff" (i.e. bearing, spacer, spring plate). That, or it'll just fall down, which is fine.

(8) Now, lower your jack to let the control arm go as low as possible.

(9) As you'll see, you have some leverage now. If you lower the strut back into the spread-apart lower mount, you should be able to angle it such that you can pull the whole thing out.

(10) Continue with steps 16 - 27 as above.

Once you've completed installation of the fronts, congratulations! The hardest part is done. Now on to the easy stuff.

Both sides are pretty much the same here, with one slightly annoying exception on the passenger's side, which I pointed out.

Ok let's get started. First, jack up both sides, remove the wheels, and put the car on jackstands. Note that I did this a little differently in my pics (i.e. the wheel's still on and no jackstand) but I discovered that wasn't necessary, even though the Bentley says it was. Just follow along. NOTE: It is important to make sure that you have both sides jacked up when you do this, otherwise you'll meet incredible frustration (like I did) when you can't seem to figure out why you can't get the spring out.
 

Optional - because I had to go back in several times, this liner became a real PITA. So I just cut out the part the blocks the bolts so in the future, I can just rip right in.

Place your floor jack under the rear control arm and jack it up so that the spring's compressed slightly.

Now, remove the two 16mm upper shock bolts.
 

Once these are removed, slowly lower the jack. The shock should come down nice and easily, and the spring should pop (fall) right out.

Next, remove the lower shock mounting screw and bolt, using your 16mm open-ended wrench to counter-hold, and remove the shock.

To remove the upper shock mount, use a combination of a 16mm open-ended wrench (no need for deep offset here) and a pair of vice grips, similar to the technique used on the front.
 

Once it's removed, re-install the shock mount and dust boot on your new H&R shock, using the included replacement 16mm bolt.
 

Now, on to the rear height-adjustment perches. These things are a bit odd to figure out if you've never seen them before, but you actually have top disassemble them and "sandwich" the rear spring mounting point on the car. To disassemble the perches, you'll need to first remove a small metal retaining clip (that keeps them from completely unscrewing).

Like the fronts, grease up the rear perches with anti-seize, and install as pictured.

Install the shock, attach the lower shock mounting bolt + nut, and tighten it up (44 ft-lbs).

VW TECH BY: Noah Lehmann-Haupt