Good morning,
I recently replaced both front struts in my 1979 242 (bone stock, automatic). I now have this terrible rattle when I go over bumps, sounds like an exhaust rattle but I have confirmed that the exhaust is not the source of the rattle. It seems worse on the right side than the left side. I have attempted to tighten the gland nut, and I feel that I cannot tighten it any further without stripping it (very, very tight).


OEM Struts were replaced with "Sachs Super Touring 274235 Made it Mexico" sourced from fcp (I was under the assumption these were the OEM replacements). I also replaced the strut mounts with the expensive Volvo OEM mounts at the same time.

When I replaced the original (probably from 1979) Boge struts, there were spacers at the bottom of the strut tube. These spacers would not fit with the new Sachs struts (the gland nut would not tighten down with the Sachs struts installed with these spacers), so I left the spacers out...

I found information on this forum suggesting that struts can rattle within the strut tube (side-to-side) causing this noise. I believe this is the source of my rattle and am considering replacing the struts (again) with some struts that do not suck.

Looking for input on which struts to install that will fit and not rattle. This is not a performance vehicle, I bought the Sachs Super Touring as they were listed as the OEM replacement. I like to keep this car as close to stock as possible.

One more thing, the crappy Sachs struts work well, they just seem to be the source of this low speed, over bumps rattle. At high speed (more than 25 mph) there is no rattle, but since 95% of my driving is in a city with crap roads I hear the rattle constantly...


Thank you for any thoughts or advice!