Strut install question

[frag]

I cannot wait any longer to put my new struts on. The top spire of the driver's side front spring broke and is making ugly noises when i turn the wheel at standstill. The good news is the car is still drivable (took me a while to understand what had happened) and Subaru will pay for the spring ifi inspection of the old spring shows corrosion to be the culprit. Following a recall, they had already installed a retainer in 2002 to prevent the spring from puncturing the tire in case of a break due to corrosion.

MY QUESTION is how do I hold the strut piston rod steady while I torque the top bolt? There is a female hexagonal socket right inside the top of the piston rod where the threads are, but I dont understand how I can put a hex wrench in there at the same time I put a socket on the nut. Is there a special tool to do this ?

I made a search with «struts install» and got a few results but none with the info I want.

Thanks in advance for any input.

[99obw]

http://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/showpost.php?p=132730&postcount=16

 

I am not sure if the wrench and socket that I used were actually 14mm. They were the same size, and whatever size they needed to be, but I don't remember what they actually were.

[frag]

I made a strut tool by welding a 14mm socket to the box end of a 14mm wrench, then welding the 1/2" drive part of a cheap socket to the wrench handle. That allows me to get the @#% nut off and use my torque wrench to torque the new strut.

99obw, I'm not sure I can visualise what this looks like and how you used this tool, could you be so kind as to give me some more details. I can see how one could pass a hex wrench thru the 14mm socket opening to hold the piston rod steady but what is the purpose of welding a 1/2" drive on the other end of the wrench.

Thanks in advance.

[99obw]

I cut apart two sockets. One was a 3/8" drive the same size as the nut on the strut that I cut in half, leaving the end with the 3/8" square drive and the end with the hexagon. I welded the hexagonal end of the socket to the box end of a wrench the same size. I discarded the square drive end. This in itself would have worked just fine for a strut tool, but this was "strut tool v2.0" so I kept going. I then cut a 1/2" drive socket in half the same way, but this time saving the square drive portion of the socket. I ground the end of the cut piece opposite the square drive so that it would fit over the part of the wrench that is between the two ends. I welded the square drive about an inch from the end with the other socket piece welded to it. That gave me a way to hold the "wrench" with a breaker bar and torque it with a torque wrench.

 

My suggestion to you if you can't devise a tool by welding or find a strut tool locally would be to hold the appropriate socket with some vice-grips and pass an allen wrench through the square opening. I had to use a long skinny pipe on the allen wrench in order to apply enough torque to remove the nut.

[avk]

I imagine a pass-through socket/ratchet combination would work, such as the one from GearWrench. At Lowe's US stores, a set is $30.

[sam888]

When I did mine 1 1/2 years ago I used an impact wrench. I was able to rent one from Home Depot(large do it your self hardware store like Lowes) for about $16 bucks 24hours. Oh yea this one was a Makita electric impact wrench. Worth every penny. Make sure they have the right size socket for the nut. You loosen them up while still on the the car but don't take them all the way out. The impact wrench was also very handy in tightening them back up.

 

Search the news group for "struts". You should be able to find a link that shows detailed instructions on how to the job if you need those also.

 

Good Luck and use lot's of care with these things.

 

sam