Dougs951S

I took my suspension apart today to see what was making that nice grinding sound and found out that my top hats which are from ground control are binding up on my strut mounts when the suspension is compressed. I thought it might be because I am running the larger Fox mounts so I swapped in the factory mounts and its the same issue. It almost seems like the nose of the top hat isnt tall enough to contact the bearing its supposed to ride on without letting the sides of the hat contact the underside of the mount and cause excessive friction and general unwillingness to rotate, causing my springs to rotate instead against the top and bottom seats. Can I install a spacer somehow to fix this, maybe some washers or will those bind up too from the load? What should I do, and by the way the whole thing is greased up real well too?

Jeff N.

Pictures pls.

pontifex4

Your strut mounts are probably to blame. Mine were out of spec and the Lindsey spring hats did exactly the same thing (a skroink! noise as the spring was binding against the hat as the strut tried to turn but the hat wouldn't).

I put a big washer on top of the hat on both sides and it gave me the clearance I needed. Just be sure you still have adequate thread engagement on the strut nut.

Dougs951S

Thanks, I did the same thing. I installed a thick 14mm ID washer slathered in grease between the top hat and the bottom of the strut mount and it solved my issue, I think. Part of the problem was that the strut mount was contacting the zipties that hold my top hat to the spring, and this solved that issue as well. I still get all the threads I want because I can just lower the height of the spring a bit to compensate. Mounts are brand new with less than 500 miles on them.

Dougs951S

Just an update but I am still having an issue with this. When installed on the car with the weight on it, when the strut tries to turn it is causing the spring to chew into my brand new hats because the spring/hat is ziptied together and isnt being allowed to rotate. I'm pretty pissed that my hats have a nice ring cut into them after ~250 miles. Now I dont understand why, the extra space is ensuring that the hat is never contacting the underside of the mount and I only torqued the center nuts hand tight to test them in my drive way. WTF any ideas? I'll post some pics tomorrow. I've tried all manners of washers at this point and the damn thing keeps binding. The GC hats suck! anybody want to part with some racers edge hats?

Dougs951S

two 9/16 ID washers from lowes, new fox mounts with early mounting plates, and I think I may have also been sent a bad strut mount. I examined them both really closely today and realized that one is much tighter than the other. I called the company I ordered them from and they are sending me a new one, but as of right now one strut seems to be ok using the washers and one seems to bind. I'll post an update when I get it in the mail. Stupid question, but is the strut piston rod supposed to rotate with the mount once everything is torqued up? This seems to be whats happening, but at least the top hat and spring aren't trying to rotate anymore.