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Changing Struts 2013 LT USA


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Hello, I'm going to start off by saying that I don't personally own a Spark. Because of this, I haven't really read through everything on this forum.

Anywho, my girlfriend (who owns the spark) recently got into a small accident, and bent one of her front struts.

After getting the replacment in, I was dumbfounded by how it was held to the chasis. It wasn't like any Mc Pherson strut I had worked on before. So the point of this post is to tell you what I had to do differently in order to replace the strut. Barring any detail I describe here, the procedure will be the same for any Mc Pherson strut assembly, so find a guide for almost any car.

1.) Unlike most, where the nut that holds the top hat in place being visible from the engine bay, and having 3-4 other nuts holding it to the chasis, the spark has a nut on the top, with a washer that sandwhiches the chasis between it and the top hat below. This is important, because it means you DO NOT need to apply the spring compressors before removing the top bolt (obviously you will need them after the strut comes out though).

Here is an image after pulling the strut out. This is the top hat that is the bottom of the sandwhich on the chasis.
post-2432-0-64500100-1435069408_thumb.jp

2.) This is the big one. On my girlfiends spark at least, there was a long piece of very thin metal above the strut. Much to thin to provide any rigitity, any the only thing mounted to it was one of the 3 mounts for the wipier motor. Because we lacked any special tools for removal of the nut, we had to use an impact wrench. In order to get the wrench to the bolt, we had to do some drilling.

There might be someone else who found another way to do this job, but for us, it was the only way we were able to get it done.

To get to the spot, we had to remove the plastic trim just below the hood (above the strut) and directly below that is the thin sheet of metal.

I didn't think to take any pictures until later in the process, but I can show you how the hole looked. (This is the pilot hole, we made the hole just big enough to fit the extension for our impact wrench to fit)

post-2432-0-11003900-1435069261_thumb.jp

Small goof, the image above is before we drilled the hole, the image below inludes the hole.
post-2432-0-91657500-1435069742_thumb.jp

From here, we applied the socket (size 24), then ran the extension through the hole, and attached the impact to the extension.

All in all, not too difficult, but it did take quite a long time with us trying to figure out how to do the job with out drilling.

Edited by bobalisious
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