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Ever have a strut gland back off?


Tom1200

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At this past weekend's VARA race at Spring Mountain I had the gland nut in the right front back out. During the first sessions of the day there was this weird grumble out of the front that I initially thought might be a wheel bearing. Upon jacking up the car we discovered the gland nut had backed out almost completely. I simply threaded it back down and then tapped round till it was tight.

 

One of the 510 drivers told me he has had this happen. In 29 years of racing the 1200 I've never had this happen.

 

The handling in the Esses was rather interesting; the car would go left, right & snap into the final left.

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i had it happen on my 1200 coupe 

took a bit to figure it out but when i jacked it up it became obvious 

we were driving on a fun run on a twisty bumpy road headed for the coast when it happened 

i thought it was the strut nut loose because i had heard that noise before but it was slightly different sound 

and turned out to be the gland nut 

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Never had it happen on any of my 1200's but then again, I am not out there trying to get to the finish line like you are.  I drive the green car rather calmly (is that a word?).  The grey car I have done autocross 2 maybe 3 times but most of the driving in it is just normal.

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Yes I have had this problem. It was apparently caused by a strut insert that was a bit short. I "shimmed" the assembly with a couple of washers so a full thread or more was visible at the nut and never had it happen again. I presume that the strut insert was 

hammering" the nut a bit like an impact wrench.

Dennis

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Yes I have had this problem. It was apparently caused by a strut insert that was a bit short. I "shimmed" the assembly with a couple of washers so a full thread or more was visible at the nut and never had it happen again. I presume that the strut insert was 

hammering" the nut a bit like an impact wrench.

Dennis

Now there's someone I never thought I'd see here...  B)

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I've taken several of the original oil bath dampers apart to change the oil for something thicker. Last spring I noticed the driver's side was 'soft' took apart and the valve was broken. Rebuilt with spare parts. Never thought about the nut coming loose after I tightened them. Used a monkey wrench AKA pipe wrench to tighten them on.

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Yes, had it loosen up about a year after changing it. Definitely noticed due to the weird front end boink it made. Not sure why either, I tightened those down pretty damn good.

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In the old days we rebuilt lots of struts, we checked out a rebuild kit for $8 which included o-rings the seal in the flange nut and a bottle of shock oil with CC markers on the side and we used different amounts of oil for track, dirt roads or street. We never pulled the pin on the rear just bent the strut down to clear the fender and used an on strut spring compressor. I had this steering shaft out of a 521 when I rebuilt the steering box which I cut off just short enough to fit in the bottom drawer of my tool box, the other end had a 5” worm gear on it that kept a death grip on the rags I used to clean the rear strut oil out. it paid 4 hours to rebuild 4 struts. Latter when they used inserts we cut off 6” off the rebuildible shaft and welded it back on the shaft to form a T and made 2 of the best head stands. We could build a L-head on these stands using the threaded end into the head bolt holes, we could even adjust the valves on the pins keeping the head about 4” off the bench. We found a lot of flange nits loose; Clunk-Clunk and didn’t know if it was because it was not tightened enough or had to do with the brand of insert so we just peened them in. I had a bunch of shims in my box I used when the insert was too short. I always would pull on the shaft to check for end play sometimes using up to 4 shims to achieve tight.

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