The next problem I ran into was closely related to the first. When I was trying to remove the little plastic piece (the thing it hangs from on the store shelf) from my newly purchased socket, it splintered and took a big chunk out of my thumb!!! The good news is that was the only injury I sustained for the whole project, other than my pride (more on that later)
Some more good news. Since I had done this twice before, taking everything apart was much easier than I was expecting. Here are some pictures of the carnage.
Underside of the Passenger Side Camber plate. Note the wear spots
Side view of the Passenger side camber adjustment plate. Note the wear on the right side.
Top View of the camber adjustment plate.
Underside of the Strut mount
Top View of the strut mount
Passenger side camber plate and strut mount together.
Passenger side washers for Strut Bearing. Not *too* bad.
The Passenger side wasn't too bad, just worn out. Now comes the good stuff!
Driver's Side camber adjustmet plate (M-I-C... K-E-Y... LOL)
Remains of one washer on driver's side strut bearing. There should be 2 washers, this was all I could find.
All that's left of the driver's side strut bearing. Didn't get a picture of the Passenger side... more on that later.
Since I was going back to stock style upper mounts and no longer using the camber adjustment plates, I assumed I needed to get stock style strut bearings. WRONG!!! The strut mount had nothing to do with the type of bearings required. Because I have "coil-over" type springs, I needed a completely different type of bearing which I did not have and wasn't sure where to get. This was about 1:00 pm on a Friday, and I REALLY needed to get it back on the road by Monday so I could get to work. Ah the joys of working on your daily driver!
I threw around some ideas trying to figure out how to proceed, most of which involved spending way more money than I wanted. I could have put the stock struts and springs back in, but that would have been a step backwards as the struts were pretty worn out. I couldn't put the stock springs on the Koni struts because when the coil-overs are installed on the struts, the stock spring perches are cut off. There was no way I could afford a new set of Konis. Even a set of OEM replacement struts was not in the budget. Finally, I decided to try a company I'd heard a lot of good things about. I got on the Internet and searched for McMaster-Carr. Sure enough, I found the bearings and washers I needed and they did Saturday delivery! It never said how much the shipping charge would be for Saturday delivery, but at that point I didn't really care! I placed the order. How did we do anything before we had the Internet.
The parts came on Saturday afternoon. There was one minor hitch... I had ordered the wrong washers, the ones I got were quite a bit thicker then the original ones. There was no turning back now, I would have to make them work. I quickly put the Driver's side back together. I should have been concerned that everything was going back together too easily. After I got the passenger side put together, I noticed that it looked a bit different from the driver's side. I re-checked my work and realized that when I put the driver's side together, I hadn't seated the bearings properly, so they got pinched between the top of the strut rod and the upper strut mount. My brand new parts were RUINED!!!
Here's what's left of the NEW driver's side bearing that I installed incorrectly! (smacks forehead)
Fortunately, the new washers were still OK and the old Passenger side bearing was still intact, so I re-used it and CAREFULLY put everything back together. When I took it for a test drive, I was delighted to find out that the steering wheel was straight again (had been at a 45 degree angle when driving down the road) and the car no longer pulled to the right!!! And of course there is no more clunking when turning the steering wheel!
