OrangeBird

iTrader: (1)

So ol Orangebird had gotten to making a disconcerting clunking sound going over certain road imperfections and being a daily driver bad sounds are investigated the minute they pop up . Having checked a bunch of the usual suspects and finding them OK I decided to pull the little black plastic cones off of the strut mounts and man oh man am I glad I did ! The pictures tell the story and of course since I had no idea how old the struts themselves were I went ahead with installing two new strut mounts and two new struts that I bought from Rock Auto . Amazingly , not only was the clunk gone , but also the steering wheel play was reduced greatly (never really noticed just HOW much play it had till the repair eliminated most of it !) and the car no longer pulls to the right , all in all I'd say it was well worth my time to pull those plastic caps ( which don't fit on the new strut mounts , the Monroe units appear to have a slightly smaller hole on top than the originals did) .

tealman92

Time for a realignment now that those were changed out.

OrangeBird

iTrader: (1)

Had it done an hour after I finished cleaning up & putting away the tools . There is a thread somewhere around here that lists the right specs to make our cars roll correctly and the alignment shop I use are a bunch of great guys and were happy to align it to the specs I brought .

Honestly , I was surprised at how much of a (good) difference replacing those mounts made in the way the car handles

firestorm

Was the rearward slot extra wide on the mount? I haven't found one that has the correct size slot since most manufactures now make the slot extra wide to accommodate both early and late style mounts.

W.E.G.

Easy installation for new top mounts.

Huge difference in quality of ride.

W.E.G.

I aligned my car with a yardstick and a tape measure after reworking my front suspension.

Tracks straight as an arrow at WOT in top gear on the highway.