Gravel_sal

Other than being blown out and the front bumper hitting parking stoppers b/c it was so low, here is why we replaced the struts in the 93 IMP with 98 FOR parts:

Rear tophat was blown.

ans as you now know why you need to use IMP tophats and NOT the FOR tophats...

FOR:

gen 1 IMP tophat

Anyhoo, here's a diagram from my 95 legacy service manual.

You will put the washer between #3 and #2, and it needs to fit down inside the well where you see the nut in the first pic.

Ciao!

-mark-

You need to check your settings, I tried PMing you and it says the user has decided NOT to receive PMs...

ok so by what I understood, I put spring, then tophat, then washer, then nut, because if I try to put nut only I will run out of thread. right?? why cant I PM you?

I thought about it some more, and I think I had the order wrong.

So when you put the strut together, it'll be the strut shock, then the [compressed] spring on a little rubber ring on hte lower spring perch, then you extend the shock all the way out and slip the tophat on the top of the shock (the stub in those photos), then the washer (to take up the rest of that long collar from the FOR strut, then the nut. So the washer goes on TOP of the tophat, so it was to be small enough to fit IN that little divot in the tophat AND have a large enough hole for the shock, then the nut, so the waher and the shock sandwhich the tophat.

I wish I had a photo of that process but I didn't take those pix...

Does that make sense??

later and good luck,

-mark-

Wow man that makes perfect sense now, thanks for the help! I think ill be starting a build thread soon so u can check it out. Thanks again for the quick response

Basically you want to take up some of that taller collar that the FOR shock has where the IMP collar is rather small...

That way the nut clamps down on the threads, and sandwiches the the washer (seated on the thicker part of the shock collar) to the tophat. Without the washer, the nut runs out of thread before it clamps the tophat onto the shock, thus the clunk as the tophat has play over the taller part of the FOR shock's collar. . .

Take your strut to the parts or hardware store and test-fit them...

Hey,

About the washer. I think (from memory of like 6 years ago) it needs to be like 5mm? thick or so.

When you take the tophat off, here's what you'll see:

and here is the shock from a 99 FOR strut.

I do not remember the size of washer I got, but it needs to have an opening big enough for the shock stud, but to seat around that collar, but not TOO big to interfere with the bottom side of the tophat.

I know other folks have gotten washers that that are thick enough then drilled or drimmeled out the whole so it's wide enough to fit over the shock stud, yet seat ON the thicker part of the shock stud's collar.

Does that make sense??

so I wanted to know a bit more about the washer that goes between the tophat of an imp and the fozzy struts. just wanted to know how thick it needs to be and exsactly where it goes. thanks for the help