4x4 Mag - Niva Suspension Lift

Raising the Lada Niva Suspension

By Peter Shepherd

Now we all know that the NIVA is a very capable off-road vehicle. The biggest draw back to its ability off the road is the relatively small amount of ground clearance under the front differential, due in part to the independant suspension set up of the front axle. When my Brother first approached me with the idea of raising the suspension on his Lada Niva, I figured that it would be a simple enough job. The Niva has a coil spring set up, and so just swapping the springs for extended versions seemed simple enough. How wrong could I be!!

The first job was to find a Niva for sale as spares or repairs and as luck would have it we located one with a suspension lift kit already fitted, and by the look of it, the kit hadn't been on very long. The chassis was rotten, and the rear axle was no longer fastened to anything more solid than a piece of cardboard! So this seemed to be the ideal donor car, and at only £200, it made for a cheap suspension lift. Getting the springs off the donor vehicle was the easy bit. I simply dropped the whole rear axle off, keeping all the parts that would come in handy later on, especially the shock absorbers, as these were longer units to suit the raised springs.

The front springs were a little bit harder to get off. As you can see from the picture, the springs weren't actually any longer than the originals, but were at least a couple of millimetres thicker, meaning a much higher poundage of spring. My coil spring compressors really struggled to compress the springs far enough to release them from between the lower wishbone and the top spring seat. Infact, in the end, one of the compressors gave up and bent, meaning that I had to get the springs out another way, and I had no idea how I would get them back into the other Lada.

Eventually, by placing a trolley jack under the bottom wishbone and compressing the spring as far as I could, I managed to undo the bolts that held the bottom ball joint to the lower wishbone, and then slowley lower the jack, whilst standing back as far as possible. Even this didn't release the spring, the lower wishbone was as low as it could go, and the spring was still under a good deal of tension, so off came the anti-roll bar, and by using a long bar and plenty of effort prising the bottom arm down, the spring finally flew out. I had no idea how I would get it back in.

With the rear end of the good Niva secured on large axle stands, I compressed the springs as far as possible with a new set of coil spring clamps, undid the lower shock absorber mounting, and lowered the axle on a trolley jack, the springs then lifted out easily. Fitting the new springs was simply a reversal of this operation, with the spring well clamped, it fitted into the space easily with a little pushing down on the axle. I then raised the axle with the trolley jack until the new extended shock absorber would reach, and hold the spring in place. Replace the anti-roll bar and the job was done. With the springs being of a thicker gauge material, they didn't seem to fit in the spring seats properly, but I reckoned that they would soon settle in when used off road.

The front springs were a different thing all together. The original springs came out fairly easily, although the job took a lot longer than the rear springs as more components needed to be removed. First job was to remove the brake caliper as a complete unit, and tie it up out of harms way. This was mainly because the caliper was in the way, and without it, there was a lot more room. The brakes on these Ladas are huge by the way. I don't think I have ever seen such a large brake caliper fitted to a standard road going car before, with two fluid inlets and what looked like four pistons. Next I removed the anti-roll bar mounting at both the lower wishbone, and the chassis, as this made it easier to push it out of the way. ( I later removed the anti-roll bar completely, as I thought that with the car only being used for off road driving, and with the wheel travel possibly being greater, the anti-roll bar would hinder the axle movement). The shock absorber was also removed, to be replaced later with the longer ones.

Due to the confined space between the lower wishbone and top spring seat, I had difficulty getting the two spring clamps in place, and so in the end I used the trusty old trolley jack under the lower wishbone technique, and compressed the spring whilst I unbolted the ball joint at the upper wishbone. When I then lowered the jack, the spring almost fell out, and with a bit of pushing at the lower arm, the spring finally came out. The technique of removing the top ball joint allowed the hub assembly to stay on the drive shaft, and the whole lot moved down with the lower arm.

Now for the fun bit. Getting the new spring in!! For a start, these springs were so strong that my coil spring clamps just didn't want to compress them far enough to get the springs between the lower wishbone and top spring seat, eventually, with my spring clamps straining, and my brother standing on the lower wishbone, I managed to prise the spring into place with a hefty bar.

I then discovered that there wasn't really room for the spring clamps, as no matter where I positioned them, they would catch on one thing or the other, so they had to come off. I positioned a large bottle jack under the bottom arm, and tried to compress the spring enough for me to get the spring clamps off. No way! The springs were that strong that the car just went up in the air!! So we all sat on the front of the car, hoping that this would compress the spring with the extra weight, but it didn't, and I had to find a way around the problem. I was determined that these springs would go in. After all, someone had fitted them in the previous vehicle. I decided to just remove the spring clamps, they were stopping the whole job from going together anyway, and I just hoped that the spring would stay in place and not shoot out across the workshop. I gingerly undid the clamps, and luckily the spring stayed in, but it now pushed the lower arm and hub assembly so far down that I ended up with a gap of about eight inches between the upper wishbone, and the top ball joint. No amount of jacking up under the arm would close the gap, as this simply just lifted the car, and so I had to think again.

After much thinking and jacking up and down, sitting on the front wings, prising with bars and generally cursing Ladas, I realised that I was getting nowhere, and that fitting this one front spring had so far taken about 3 Hours!!
Finally, an idea did 'spring' to mind. I had a few lengths of threaded bar (8mm) lying around the place, this was used mainly for brake rods on trailers, but I hoped that I had found a better use for it now!!

Using 3 lengths of rod at about 250mm long, I inserted them through the bolt holes for the ball joint mounting in the upper wishbone, and down through the actual ball joint itself. By putting plain nuts on both ends of each piece of bar, I was able to slowly tighten each nut in turn, and this slowly closed the gap between the wishbone and hub assembly, as it compressed the spring. Bit by bit, the gap got smaller, and the spring became more and more compressed. I also cut the upper rubber bump stop off, in the hope that the upper wishbone would come down far enough to meet the hub assembly. So great was the tension on the threaded bar, that at one stage one of the bars actually stripped its threads!

Finally, I was able to replace the threaded bars with the correct bolts one at a time. The spring didn't seem to like being in this small space, and had adopted a rather curved shape. The strain on the ball joints must be tremendous, luckily they were relatively new.
All that was left now was to fit the new extended shock absorber, refit the Brake caliper and do the other side! So far it had taken around 8 hours, this included stripping the springs from the old car, but about 5 of these 8 hours had been spent on the same spring!!

As you can see from the picture on the left, the Lada now sits a good 2 or 3 inches higher, and although the springs seemed to be very strong, the ride isn't that bad, and axle articulation is greatly improved.
I wasn't too sure that the front springs would stay in place, but so far the Lada has performed very well off road, with the suspension lift making the going a lot easier. The springs seem to have bedded in, and although they can seem very noisy at times, I think that they were a good idea.

We toyed with the idea of fitting larger wheels now that there was room in the arches, and we tried some 16" rims, but we couldn't justify the expense of another set of decent tyres, so in the end we stuck with the 15" mud terrains.

Unfortunately, after only a few outings with the car, my brother has decided to sell it. So should anybody be on the look out for a raised suspension kit for their Niva, take my advice, buy this one, the hard work has already been done!!