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It is a bit challenging! With the fuel door in place, hook the bottom of the spring first. The spring will fight you. Grab the upper part of the spring with narrow or needle nose pliers and pull the top hook in place while you're pushing on the body of the spring with your thumb. Be sure you don't have the RH and the LH springs reversed.
Well I finally got those fuel door springs installed. HHR's advice is spot-on but here are some extra tips I might add for those that see this fix in their future.
For me - looking at all the pics, then putting the spring on in the same orientation as the pics seem too easy. And it was. In a couple minutes I had both springs on - "looking" exactly the same as in the pics, but the door still not working - and still flopping around.
Finally it hit me - they need to go on under tension/compressed. Now - that's when things become more difficult.
The first thing I did was slide the body of the spring onto the shaft - and do it so the arms are in the opposite direction of where they are suppose to hook to (short arm pointing at back of car / long arm pointing to front). Now pick up from HHR's post - do the bottom (short arm first). And yeah - it will fight you as you have to swing it all the way over (almost 180 degrees) to get it to hook. Watch out - if you accidentally let it go, the whole spring may fly off. Once it's hooked, do the longer one. I used some needle nose pliers as well as a pick with a little hook at the end to pull it between the narrow opening so I could pull it through - then hook it on. Once both ends are hooked on - you'll know it's right.
The first one took about 15 minutes to figure out and do. The second one took less than 5 minutes.
It's one of those things that it's easy once you know what you're doing.
Hope this helps others...
Chris
Last edited by auto_cran; Oct 13, 2018 at 07:20 PM.
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Tips for installing fuel door springs?
