Anyone know the dimensions of the upper and lower mounting bolts for the rear shocks on a 245? Length, Diameter, Pitch? Easily available at the local hardware chain? No, I haven't ruined anything, but I like to know my options.

And this one is purely out of curiosity, since I don't own a 240 with manual steering. Is it possible to replace the strut tubes on a man. steering 240 with those from a power steering model, just for ease of ball joint replacement? Or would that involve swapping out other parts as well, like control arms and steering assemblies and such.

Thanks.

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Jim - '92 Red 245 191K, and sometimes an '85 245 275K

I don't know the dimensions of the bolts, but those kinds of things are not expensive at the dealer. If I had to buy new ones, I would get them from the dealer so that the correct grade of bolt is ensured.

And the strut tubes are the same, I am not sure what you mean by ease of ball joint replacement. Somewhere very early in the line, like in the 1970s or so, the spindle size changed, but the rest of it was still the same.

Generally, the only difference between the P/S and non-P/S cars are the ball joints themselves. (Aside from the rack).

There is a difference between the turbo and non-turbo strut tubes, and that relates to the fact that the turbos had about 1/4" longer strut inserts.

Greg
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My new homepage - as of 5/7/05

Yeah, the dealer is the best option in some cases.

I thought somewhere around '78 or '79 the strut tube changed from a design where the ball joint top nut could only be accessed from inside the tube to one where the joint is bolted to a housing which is in turn bolted to the bottom of the tube. I could be wrong about that, but I posted the question because it's something I want to learn.

I got the P/S-non P/S idea in my head because I see the non P/S in catalogs as interchangeable from side to side and the P/S ones as specific to left and right, and because P/S came around sometime in the late '70s. That could be a separate issue, no pun intended.

Thanks.
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Jim - '92 Red 245 191K, and sometimes an '85 245 275K

Ah, that is interesting, it does look like there was a different design in the early 240s like you said. The Bentley book doesn't go back that far, but the old Haynes shows what you are talking about.

From looking at parts numbers, it looks like the ball joints themselves are the same regardless of year. (That could be wrong, too)

Greg
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My new homepage - as of 5/7/05

There are 3 different balljoints.

One is symmetrical and is used on both sides with manual steering regardless of year model.

The other two are offset left and right. These are used to increase the caster angle for power steering vehicles.

As far as I'm aware, the balljoints are the same regardless of which style of strut they're attached to (ie all 2-series).

I think that the ones that had the balljoint attached into the bottom of the strut housing were up to about 1976. My '78 parts car had the later style with the bolted bottom plate.