A lot of the work is done but I've been kind of lacking motivation lately. It isn't fun sticking your head inside a strut tower to work on it. Last week I discovered that the that the area of the inner fender that the fuller neck goes through as well as the neck's mounting flange were swiss cheese. I ended up bonding a piece of steel over this area after sand blasting and cleaning it, I also bought a new filler neck. I forgot to take pics at the time but I will get some later. Then I discovered that the unused can of KBS Rust Seal I was planing on using had completely hardened up on me. After experiencing shock at how much that stuff now costs, I ordered two cans of Rust Bullet instead. Now I have to wait for that to come in before I can think about finishing this job up. The plan so far is to hit the sandblasted surface with a phosphoric acid solution, wash that off, let it dry, to two coats of Rust Bullet, then coat everything with some DIY spray-on bed liner.
I wanted to accomplish something today after work and decided that it was a good time to assemble my new rear struts.
I forgot to take a picture of the old struts before taking them apart but you get the idea of how rusty they are. While they weren't completely dead, they also had no automatic rebound after being compressed.
As for why I took them apart, this is one of several reasons. Only one strut came with a nut and this washer is unobtanium from what I can find.
The last reason is these rusty guys. After looking at pictures of new assembled struts, they all seem to have these metal cups so I figured that I would need them and since nobody seems to sell them, I figured I would need to reuse them. But all they seem to do is hold the OE boot to the strut and since my new boots are attached to the bump stops and they don't fit the cups I decided to go without. Is there any special reason for these that I'm not seeing?
Pile-O-Parts
Finished product. All ready to go in when the time comes. Interestingly enough, I discovered that you don't even need a spring compressor to assemble Escort rear struts. Both the H&R springs AND the OE springs I could compress enough to put the nut on with just my own body weight pushing down on the mount, I only weigh around 140lbs.