My Koni Sport Strut is on and I am Smiling..

Merry X-mas to all. I finally finished my front strut installation on my 99xc, the job is not that difficult as what I thought in the beginning. The noise that I have been ignoring for a while from the passenger side when crossing the railroad track, bump or potholes is really a broken spring seat. So since my car have already 94K miles I have decided to renew everything like the bump stops, stop washers, spring seats, strut mounts, cross fittings, caps and Koni Sport Struts assembly all from fcpgroton.

I did the passenger side first and have taken me more than four hours because it did become a learning process then 2 hours on the 2nd one. One comment to some process that I followed through this forum, Haynes book and other site is about releasing the compressed spring tension to achieve the said 11.82 inches length before the reassembly. I followed this on the first one but the problem is, when I assembled all the parts I can not screw the cross fitting on because the spring was setting too high that the treaded part of the strut shaft is barely showing on top of the spring seats. Therefore, I have to compress 1-2 inches more to accommodate the cross fitting.

I concluded that that measurement is useless during the assembly because the only way to secure the spring seat properly in the piston shaft is to tighten the cross fitting very tight sandwiching it, and on that process you can see the spring compresses more and more as you are turning the cross fitting. So, what is the logic behind that measurement? It is not making sense to me.

As Mr. KlausC stated lately after his Koni Struts installation against fcpgroton parts, I agree with him. The six screws for the strut mount and four bolts and nuts for the strut attachment to the knuckle I ordered I did not use (a waste of money). The first one doesn’t have a washer like the original to have better footing and the bolts for the strut assembly is skinnier than the original does creating a space or gap for the assembly to move later on if not properly tighten. I end up using my not rusted original parts instead, after cleaning and applying blue Lock tight on them. The lesson is always buy OEM parts for critical aplication.

I brought the car to the dealer early this morning for proper alignment and finally enjoying the test drive around for the holidays set on the soft side for now readyfor the 10 hours round trip to San Francisco this weekend.