UhOh
Top Post Dawg
Thanks for the input, folks!
I'd had it in my mind to remove the ball joint control arm bolts. I'd struggled to understand how this could help, but since I'd seen so many people doing this I thought it was kind of the simplest thing to do. Went ahead and did this: reason for the decision was recollecting that my previous work had entailed new control arms and that the struts were installed before connecting the knuckle to the control arm. So, here's how it went down:
I installed the hat and drew up all the slack I could. At this point the bottom of the strut was within an inch of clearing the knuckle. I shifted the knuckle a bit and got a wee bit more gain. Now, my "trick"...
I used a 1/2" thick board stuffed under the strut (and on top of the knuckle) and pried up to get enough compression to then slip it over the knuckle edge and into its hole. Board acted as kind of a ramp to get up to the lip and into the hole.
No other issues.
In the past I seem to recall really racking the knuckle around and forcing the strut in and kind of rotating the knuckle. Never felt this was a great way of doing it, though it worked, as it scratches up the strut. Now that I believe that the board "trick" is likely a reliable and sound way of doing this I likely will never do another strut install!
Side note: Installed Koni Active. Second set of my suspension work career (ha ha); first was on the wife's car and I was so impressed I swore I'd install them on my car when the opportunity arose. Thanks to a broken strut spring that opportunity came a bit earlier than expected: other shocks were sill functionally fine but they were starting to rust and blister so I decided to go ahead and replace them. Oh! I'd replaced a tie rod not too long ago and was waiting to have the car aligned so no concerns about messing up the alignment: will run for a bit and let things settle, get some new summer tires installed and then have it aligned.
I'd had it in my mind to remove the ball joint control arm bolts. I'd struggled to understand how this could help, but since I'd seen so many people doing this I thought it was kind of the simplest thing to do. Went ahead and did this: reason for the decision was recollecting that my previous work had entailed new control arms and that the struts were installed before connecting the knuckle to the control arm. So, here's how it went down:
I installed the hat and drew up all the slack I could. At this point the bottom of the strut was within an inch of clearing the knuckle. I shifted the knuckle a bit and got a wee bit more gain. Now, my "trick"...
I used a 1/2" thick board stuffed under the strut (and on top of the knuckle) and pried up to get enough compression to then slip it over the knuckle edge and into its hole. Board acted as kind of a ramp to get up to the lip and into the hole.
No other issues.
In the past I seem to recall really racking the knuckle around and forcing the strut in and kind of rotating the knuckle. Never felt this was a great way of doing it, though it worked, as it scratches up the strut. Now that I believe that the board "trick" is likely a reliable and sound way of doing this I likely will never do another strut install!
Side note: Installed Koni Active. Second set of my suspension work career (ha ha); first was on the wife's car and I was so impressed I swore I'd install them on my car when the opportunity arose. Thanks to a broken strut spring that opportunity came a bit earlier than expected: other shocks were sill functionally fine but they were starting to rust and blister so I decided to go ahead and replace them. Oh! I'd replaced a tie rod not too long ago and was waiting to have the car aligned so no concerns about messing up the alignment: will run for a bit and let things settle, get some new summer tires installed and then have it aligned.
