I must thank 1972Nail for the advice and suggestions surrounding this topic, many messages were exchanged regarding spring rates, manufacturers, adjustments and the obvious silly questions from me.
I received my GAZ coilovers yesterday and got stuck into fitting them. I was unable to find a thread for fitting them but if it is out there I apologise for replicating. This is an easy suspension modification as it requires no changes to your standard setup, just bolt off bolt on. It also leaves it easily reversible should you ever wish to turn your Viva back into a boat. Personally I've had enough of scraping my door handles going around roundabouts
The coilovers are only for the front. I have adjustable GAZ dampers for the rear which I will be fitting with my standard springs. I may change my rear springs in the near future if I can source stiffer ones that fit at a fair price. I have read numerous comments on this forum about the strength of the rear turrets and the consensus is coilovers are not suitable on the rear unless you wish to fabricate in some reinforcement.
They arrived in a nice box
And they almost looked too clean and shiny to install.
You can also see from this photo I have helper springs on my coilovers as well as the main spring. I had to ask for these to be included but they came free of charge.
Fitment was relatively easy provided everything has been freed up or previously cleaned and greased. A few things I noted to make installation easier.
I tried to use spring clamps but I couldn't get them to fit in very well and they didn't compress the spring enough anyway, just drop the bottom arm. You will have to drop the bottom arm anyway because the coilover has a larger diameter than the standard shock and will not pass up through the hole in the arm like the shock does. I did this by unbolting the ball joint of the upper arm, this means you can work with the brakes out of your way.
Lord 13 mentioned in another thread that you need to keep the adjuster screw turned in towards the centre of the car otherwise you can't access it to adjust your dampening, I can second this and I learnt it the hard way yesterday. You can see this in my above photo.
You also have to compress the coilover spring by about a quarter in order to keep the locking ring off the bottom arm, this is easier to do off the car before fitting. If you don't you won't be able to get the eye low enough to pass the mounting bolt through to the damper brackets underneath the arm.
Then it is just a matter of bolting everything back together and adjusting your height and dampening so that both sides are the same.
I did a quick test run and am very pleased, the car handles and corners far better and feels more solid but not an uncomfortable rock hard. I have yet to fit the adjustable rear shocks but they should be much more straightforward.