Lowering Bottom Spring Perch

[Patcon]

I dodnt find any. I have one 240z front strut but didn't see the mate

[Captain Obvious]

Thanks for checking! And even if you do find the mate for the 240 version, that won't work for me. They need to be 260 or later.

Here's to hoping I can turn something up. Kicking myself for not grabbing a set before the pandemic started. I had a couple options for a pair for under a hundred bucks and didn't get to it. 

[wheee!]

Embarrassingly... No.
I have spring perches which have been removed from a pair of scrap front strut tubes, but I never procured a set of front struts on which to transplant the donor perches. I'm not confident in the success of this project to just go ahead and modify the struts that are currently on my car. I want another spare set to cut up.
In any event, here's where I am now:

I have recently started a couple different avenues to get my hands on a pair of front struts to finish this project, but haven't had anything delivered yet. And no... I didn't start trying again because you prompted me.   I really did start a couple weeks ago.
So, is anyone parting out a 260 or 280 that has a pair of front struts available?

Those look familiar....

[grannyknot]

CO, you don't need to weld the perch and hope that you have picked the right height, you can mount the perches on split collars and raise and lower them until you're satisfied they are perfect and then weld them.  In fact the split collars clamp with such force that you could tack the perch to one side of the collar and leave it at that.

 

[Captain Obvious]

15 hours ago, grannyknot said:

CO, you don't need to weld the perch and hope that you have picked the right height, you can mount the perches on split collars and raise and lower them until you're satisfied they are perfect and then weld them.  In fact the split collars clamp with such force that you could tack the perch to one side of the collar and leave it at that.

Thanks. I was thinking about doing just that (after I saw your post on your 510 thread).  "Test" out the amount of drop before I permanently committed to it.  

But I still need a pair of struts!

[Captain Obvious]

23 hours ago, wheee! said:

Those look familiar....

Sure do! And I apologize they are still sitting there like that!!

[Captain Obvious]

So I found front suspension parts on craigslist and went on a safari to grab them. Nice guy, reasonable prices, close enough to drive to for heavy stuff. I'm very happy with how the whole thing turned out. Front suspension loaded in the back of the Family Truckster:

Got it home and stripped everything down. Here's the strut bodies and the Tokico's that came out:

So that's where I am right now. Had to resort to the pipe wrench to get the gland nuts off, but other than that, everything went swimmingly.

 

[Captain Obvious]

@grannyknot, What tool did you use to cut your perches loose on your 510?

When I cut the perches off the stubs I got from @wheee!, I did it on the lathe by boring the inside out until the perches fell off. Can't do that with the bodies I want to put on the car.

I had originally planned to just go completely postal with the grinder and cut the perches off my tubes in pieces (since I didn't need to salvage them). But your removal method looked gentle enough that you could reuse the perches (which I assume was your plan).

[grannyknot]

Just an angle grinder with a thin cutoff wheel, you could also use a hacksaw.

 

 

[Namerow]

If possible, please mark the photo in Post #32 to show the area where the grinding needs to be done.  Based on the earlier pix (Post #28), it looks like you just ground off the weld bead that sits immediately below the perch stamping.  Is that sufficient to free up the perch?  Just want to be sure I understand this correctly.

[grannyknot]

11 hours ago, Namerow said:

If possible, please mark the photo in Post #32 to show the area where the grinding needs to be done.  Based on the earlier pix (Post #28), it looks like you just ground off the weld bead that sits immediately below the perch stamping.  Is that sufficient to free up the perch?  Just want to be sure I understand this correctly.

The weld bead holding the perch to the strut tube is about 1/8th" tall and I cut just above that, you can see the cut line right next to the weld bead  in the photo on post #32, after the perch is off you grind down the bead so the split collar and perch can slide past.

The only danger is cutting too deep and going into the strut tube, the metal is thin. A hacksaw is a safer way to remove the perch.

[Captain Obvious]

Thanks for the tool info. Some guys are artists with the angle grinder, but I'm not one of them. I'm worried that I'll slip into the strut tube.

Maybe I'll try it on the band saw first and see how slow that goes. If that's excruciatingly slow, I guess I'll try the grinder.