owenmaxx Posted November 4, 2011 Share Posted November 4, 2011 **** this car Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mccorry Posted November 4, 2011 Author Share Posted November 4, 2011 Glad it helped you guys out. owenmaxx... did you try jacking up the car, putting a breaker bar on the bolt with a stand under the breaker bar, and slowly lowering the car? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ej25_TS Posted April 6, 2012 Share Posted April 6, 2012 gonna take a crack at this tomorrow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ej25_TS Posted April 6, 2012 Share Posted April 6, 2012 also any differences when doing s-techs? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teksimian Posted April 7, 2012 Share Posted April 7, 2012 (edited) Hi thanks for the write up. i swapped out my fronts onto swifts today. went well except that one of the axles popped out of the tranny. i went to eat and found a bunch of fluid had leaked out. i just popped the axle back in and checked the tranny fluid - which was at a good level. That was tranny fluid on the ground right? everything seems fine... is there anything i should check out or be concerned about ? Edited April 7, 2012 by teksimian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ej25_TS Posted April 7, 2012 Share Posted April 7, 2012 HELP Ok just finished one problem though. Buttoned her back up and noticed the top mount had some play. I figured the weight of the car would be enough to prevent it from spinning. In the fronts it was no problem. But the rears spin when i try to torque it down? Is there a trick to to tightening the top mounts in the rears? I really don't want to have to pull them out to do so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joeblow Posted April 8, 2012 Share Posted April 8, 2012 What do you mean when you say the top mounts? Bolting the struts into the frame or bolting the top hat to the strut housing? If its the latter, you're going to want to use an air impact or find a set of pass through sockets so you can hold the center with an allen wrench/key and still use a socket to tighten it down. Without pass throughs or an impact gun, you'll have to rig something up using a set of vise grips and a regular socket. It's cool; I'm with the band Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CL21376 Posted April 8, 2012 Share Posted April 8, 2012 Without pass throughs or an impact gun, you'll have to rig something up using a set of vise grips and a regular socket. Like this?? You should be able to do this with the shocks installed on the car Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joeblow Posted April 8, 2012 Share Posted April 8, 2012 ^Exactly. That's what I had to do before I got my pass through set. It's cool; I'm with the band Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ej25_TS Posted April 8, 2012 Share Posted April 8, 2012 i just used a rubber grip to hold the strut and torqued it down. fairly easy. used this method with my old impreza back in the day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueEyedDonk Posted April 29, 2012 Share Posted April 29, 2012 Awesome write up. Received my HTechs last week, stoked to put em on ASAP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeltaNu1142 Posted April 30, 2012 Share Posted April 30, 2012 Same here. Tits mcgee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDon427 Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 Subscribed for later. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cstefanic Posted May 26, 2012 Share Posted May 26, 2012 (edited) Edit/update: found some Geo Metro 10mm studs at O'Reilly's and now everything is buttoned up well. FastWRX needs to make note that not just the 1/2" need the longer studs. -------------------- So, I'm throwing H-Techs on the car, and I've got the 3/8" saggy butt spacers for the rear. Anyone know how to get these on there? The FastWRX website says they'll work with the stock studs, but for all my cursing and flip flopping of the shock assembly I can't get them to sit and have enough room to mount into the trunk. Now I have a half-disassembled car. Any help? What's the trick? Edited May 26, 2012 by cstefanic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phillyd Posted June 24, 2012 Share Posted June 24, 2012 Installed my H-Tech's today by myself, went pretty smooth. Did the rears first and didn't think they were too bad. Honestly, the top hat nut on the front was almost as much of a pain as the rear lower nuts. Got everything installed and the test drive was successful! Anyhow, thanks for this thread, it came in handy today! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nolmers06LGT Posted October 30, 2012 Share Posted October 30, 2012 Question.. I've got about 90k on my '06 LGT. Is it a bad idea to swap just the springs at this point? Do you think that my struts are shot? It doesn't feel like it, but I would hate to go through the trouble of the swap only to realize that my struts are crap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_sharp Posted October 30, 2012 Share Posted October 30, 2012 its worth it to replace the struts if for no other reason than to save some hassle lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nolmers06LGT Posted October 31, 2012 Share Posted October 31, 2012 My only reason for not jumping into the struts is that I'm trying to save some hassle from my better half.. She's going to leave me if I keep dropping money into my subie... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_sharp Posted October 31, 2012 Share Posted October 31, 2012 http://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php/wife-tactics-190864.html lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nolmers06LGT Posted November 6, 2012 Share Posted November 6, 2012 http://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php/wife-tactics-190864.html Awesome information!!! Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonman586 Posted October 27, 2013 Share Posted October 27, 2013 (edited) Help. I was trying to take the top nut off the front passenger strut and the hex stripped. I had a 19mm pass through on the nut and a 6mm allen to socket on the hex hole and the damn hex hole stripped. Anything I could do? Solved: Hammered in a larger allen into the end of the rod. New struts anyway so destruction is acceptable. Edit 2: Long story short I had the front two struts replaced 30k ago by a shop. I bent one of the new ones just recently so I decided to do all four by myself. The top nuts on both the front struts were tightened to oblivion possibly with an impact wrench. The passenger side one is detailed above. The drivers side one had the same issue but when I tired the same method mentioned above the nut was torqued on so tight I cracked the rod when I tried to loosen the nut. It took me 25 mins to drill out the rod to get the nut off to get the rest of the hardware on my new strut. Beware of mom and pop shops with impact wrenches and a blatant disregard for torque specs. Thanks for the detailed wirteup with color pictures. Edited October 29, 2013 by dragonman586 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jswain101 Posted June 2, 2015 Share Posted June 2, 2015 I've tried everything to loosen the lower bolt on the strut.Is there any other trick to it? It's almost stripped so any help would be awesome. I'm pretty frustrated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LRegvall Posted June 2, 2015 Share Posted June 2, 2015 Have you tried putting a breaker bar on the nut and lowering the car on the breaker bar? Each rear corner should put around 800 lbs on the bar. It's been a while since I did it so I don't remember the exact set up. But when you look at it and think about it, it's pretty intuitive. You have to make sure that you have 1/2" drive, 25" bar and that everything is lined up well. Lower the jack slowly. That worked for me. They are a pain. Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnowCap Posted June 19, 2015 Share Posted June 19, 2015 Hello everyone! So, I ordered up the Fred Bean Bilstein HD LGT conversion kit, and ended up ordering Swift springs to pair them with. I have a question about the strut-top mount nut. The Haynes manual says 41lb ft of torque. I'm finding that I can not get the rented torque-wrench to "click" so I'm reverting to going by-feel... I've scoured around for pictures to see how much thread is left on the rod once this nut is tightened. I can only get it so tight before the damper-rod starts to spin. Then I have to pull up the dust boot, grab it with my hand, and continue a final torque. Is this right??? I'm concerned about the top-mount having play/rattle if this nut isnt fulling torqued. As of now, there is about 1/4" of thread remaining off the top of the rod/nut. The top-mount is rather secure although, I can feel some play if I put side-to-side and back-and-forth pressure on it to see if it will move/rattle. Feedback would be appreciated. I know that it's important not to over-torque, but top-mount play isnt good either, right? Thanks to all! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mccorry Posted July 21, 2019 Author Share Posted July 21, 2019 Bump from the dead.... to answer a question from earlier in this thread and ask a new one. Are H-tech springs on stock OEM struts hard on the struts and will they impact the life? Um... NO! I am at 232K miles and I think I just lost one (or both) of my rear struts in the past 3 weeks. The tail of the car seems to hop to the right on bumps and feels "floaty" at speed. As soon as the weather cools down, I'm putting new struts on all 4 corners. Shocking how long the OEM struts lasted. Going to put H-techs back on the front, but thinking of putting the stock OEM springs on the rear. The rear has always looked/sat too low for me. Has anyone else done this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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