7 hours, 3 beers, 4 Sprites, 2 rounds of Gojo, 1 large pizza, and no busted knuckles later, Joes’ maxima has 2 new front struts and a fresh oil change.
I think we could do it now in under 3 hours if we had to do it all over again.
Joe’s upper suspension mount + bushing was making some extreme noises, and since his car has 138k miles on it, he decided he wanted to get some Monroe Sensa-Trac struts, and he asked, “Harold, do you think you want to tackle this?”
Thinking to myself, I’ve wrenched on my Jetta, MINI, GTO, and Big Red, sure…how hard could it be? Well, MacPherson struts are clever if devilishly complex devices, and properly servicing one requires a medieval looking device known as a spring compressor:
you see, the strut is a combination of shock (which controls or “damps” the elastic motion of the spring) and the spring, which actually holds up your car off the “unsprung weight” of things like your control arms, wheels, and wheel hubs. Thing is, the springs have to hold up a 3000lb car, so each one has LOTS of potential energy stored in it, which is only restrained by the nut at the top. in order to safely remove the nut without killing yourself, you need to compress and hold the spring.
Anyway, we secured the car on jack-stands, drained the oil, then tackled the driver’s side strut, making every mistake imaginable without injuring ourself: We were overcautious with the spring compressor, so that took extra time, and we disassembled the spring seat too much, requring us to reassemble it minutes later. So, 5 hours in, we only had the driver’s side done.
We were discouraged.
However, pizza and a sense of accomplishement pushed us through to the passenger’s side, where we applied all we’d learned with the driver’s side, and did that in less than 1 hour.
w000000000000t!