Strut Change


Here is a post I made to the Mr2 list after changing my struts:

Just wanted to pass along a few notes for those that one day plan to change out their struts as I put in some tokico 5-ways this weekend. Besides this post, there are some other good posts out there that have been made in the past, do a search in the archives.

Things that were absolutely needed besides basic hand tools:

  • Vise
  • 19 mm deep well
  • If you are keeping the stock springs you *will* need spring compressors.
  • Torque Wrench
  • Pipe Wrench
In addition to this, I needed a few more things as it never fails that I always run into problems that others don't seem to have! :)

Picked me up a nice 2' 1/2" drive breaker bar and 1/2" drive 17 mm socket after snapping 2 3/8" to 1/2" drive adapters like they were putty. Apparently the last shop that did my alignment wrenched on the lower suspension bolts on VERY well.  Even my nice newly rebuilt IR-244 impact wrench couldn't budge 2 of the 8 bolts.

I picked up a dremel tool to notch out the housing to get the brake line out to keep from having to re-bleed.  It worked great, although it took out ~8 cut off wheels in the process.  While I would normally suggest anyone doing this job to go ahead and disconnect the brake lines as it never hurts to throw a new can of Ford HP fluid in, I had just done this a few months ago.

Having an air compressor and impact wrench is a big time saver on this job.  With it you can easily take off the suspension bolts, the wheel lugs, the main strut bolt up top, and you can also use it to quickly and easily compress the spring compressors!  Thanks again for the good deal on the IR-244 Ron!
 

Other notes:

Gland nuts are something else, eh?  I tried both methods of taking them off, one working when the other didn't.  I was able to get the fronts off by putting the nut itself in the vise, and twisting the housing, but this didn't work for the rear, so I put the housing the vise and was just barely able to get the gland nut off with a pipe wrench and breaker bar. The old stock rear gland nuts are pretty much destroyed.  I hope I got all of the new ones on tight enough!

The stock struts were in worse than sad shape.  All of them were deader than dead.  All four stock struts compressed with the greatest of ease, and once down, stayed down..  Sigh, I knew I should have done this earlier.

The old metal cases from the stock struts makes great cheater bars!  The biggest problem was how to correctly torque the main strut bolt (the 19mm that bolts to the strut piston rod) for the fronts.  On the rear it was no problem as all I had to do was to put the strut top in the vise. However on the fronts the strut top was too big for my vise, so I cheated and with a careful trigger finger gave a very slight tap on the impact wrench to tighten the tops.  If you have a really big vise this won't be a problem as you can stick the whole strut top in there.  However if your vise isn't very big you may run into this.

After getting done and getting the car back on the ground, I found that I had a rally car in the making!  The ground clearance must have raised at least a 1/2". Lol...  It looks like I'm ready to go off roading.  I'm taking the car in for an alignment tomorrow morning, but from the quick drive I had today to make sure all was ok, things look very promising.