Tightening strut top without removal?

[mkIIIman089]

Hey SM! A while back I posted about a rattle in the hatch area and I came out with two options: hatch rattling from bad bump stops, or the strut is loose.

I replaced the bump stops, and the rattle continued.

Yesterday a buddy of mine was sitting in the back so I asked him to check the strut top to see if he can find something moving. Now, from his rather poor description I came to the conclusion that the top of the shock is loose in the pillow ball mount and needs to be tightened. I checked the TSRM and it says 20ft/lbs is what it should be torqued to. However, I have neither the time nor the tools to take it off, compress the spring, and retighten that nut. So is it necessary to tighten the nut with the spring tension off of the top or can I do it from inside the car with everything mounted?

Thanks for the input!

 

[IJ.]

It's actually easier to do in place Colin!

 

[Dirgle]

Yep like IJ said. However be careful and don't over tighten them. You will risk stripping the angle tooth on the mount. Then it becomes pretty well impossible to tighten or remover the shock without damaging it. When I first put on my KYB GR2 the back two wouldn't tighten down, so they rattled. I kept tightening till I stripped the mount. Luckily I had a parts car, otherwise it would have been a real nightmare. I had to place 2mm worth of washers in there to get them to tighten down correctly.

 

[mkIIIman089]

Really... sounds good to me IJ! I'll go and see if I can retorque it in a little while. Still too cold outside for comfort, haha.

dirgle, I'll make sure I don't go too much over 20 ft/lbs. I heard someone else who cracked the pillow ball mount from overtightening as well.

It's the previous owner's botch job BTW, he put Tokico Illumina IIs and Eibach springs in a car that has no TEMS... *shrug*

 

[mkIIIman089]

Okay, I just finished checking it out, and all I can say is wow. I took both covers off the back shocks and the rattley one was clearly visually loose. The solid side had 3-4 threads on top of the nut, the other had like 1-2 threads. So I took my deep socket and tightened it with a ratchet a good 1.5-2 rotations with completely no resistance on the wrench, then I switched to the torque wrench when it finally snugged and torqued it to ~22 ft/lbs (not the best torque wrench, it was the 1st one I bought) so hopefully now it won't make that horrible noise any more.

Tomorrow I don't have anywhere to go so maybe I'll just go get gas or something as a test run. But I think that should do it, I mean the thing was pretty much barely on.

Now for my last task in order to make get the car in "perfect" running order... custom fabbing a bracket for the AFM since it doesn't bolt up any more with LIPP pipes.