Questions and Answers From Our Common Strut Installation Mistakes Video

Woo hoo, questions and answers, baby. Hey friends, it's Len here from 1A Auto. So, in today's video, I want to try doing something a little bit different. For this one, we're gonna do a little questions and answers. You know what I say at the end of all my videos, leave something in the comment section below because I always love to hear from you. Well, you guys ask me questions, and I never really have a chance to answer them, I just have to be the guy on the other side of the screen that gets to read them at the end. Well, I got something to say, I want to talk about it. So sit down, buckle up, buttercup. Here we go.

Now all the questions that I'm gonna be talking about in this segment has to do with "Our Common Struts Installation Mistakes Video". That was an awesome video. I had a lot of fun doing it. People left me a lot of questions, because they really wanted to know. Now the first question comes from my old buddy cousin, John. He left me a message on there. And essentially, he wanted to ask me about coil springs. The coil springs, of course, this area right along here. And you might notice on the OEM, it's a little bit different than your aftermarket. Of course, the aftermarket is gonna try to have the same specs as the OEM, but there is always gonna be some slight differences. Essentially, as long as the right height stays approximately the same, you should be good to go. And of course, as far as spring rates is concerned, that's kind of why you'd wanna pay attention to the springs themselves. We can see on this one, it's a little bit different than the OEM. So that's why you would essentially wanna make sure that you replaced the struts as an assembly and as a pair.

Couple more things I wanna touch on, that involves this essentially, is what about if you were taking apart your struts, because you wanted to try to piecemeal it together? Maybe you were just gonna replace just the strut in there, but you are gonna reuse that coil spring. Well, that might seem like it's a good idea, because it's gonna save you a couple bucks. And some people even might say that the original or OE coil is probably a little bit better than the aftermarket one. That might be true. But, if you were to look at this one right along here, this one's got a little defect in it right there. Something like that, you might not have been able to see if you didn't take it apart. This one's an extreme case. But there are other cases where it looks like the paints just a little bit fragmented a little bit. And you can't even tell that the actual coil itself is broken. So, of course, you can do your front struts, however you wanna do them. If you wanna try to piecemeal it together and just do one part here and one part there, it's completely up to you, it's your prerogative. Maybe you wanna go to the dealer and spend a whole bunch of money on buying a pair of struts like this. Or maybe you don't mind just going with an aftermarket one. It's true, it might look a little bit different. But if you're doing as a pair anyways, it really shouldn't make too much of a difference.

Now this one's from somebody named Nugget, or maybe Nugget. I'm not really sure N-U-G-G-E-T, call it what you want. Anyways, what they're noticing is when I went ahead, and I tried to pull back that knuckle a little bit, I mentioned something about putting a tug on your axle. And if you put a tug on your axle, you could potentially damage it. But in this instance, apparently now there's a clicking noise after they have it all the way back together, they wanna know what's going on, I wanna talk about it. So, right down here, we have a few axles for you to look at. This area along here is gonna be the side that goes into the transmission itself. There's gonna be an inboard CV axle, and then there'll be an outboard CV axle. This one right here broke, and I'll talk about that in a future video. Anyways, either way, there should be boots that cover both of these joints. And the reason why that is, because it wants to keep out all the dirt, or debris, or moisture, or anything else from getting into these joints. Now, you know what it looks like just like this with a torn boot, you know what it looks like with a boot because why wouldn't you, but who's ever torn one of these apart to see exactly what's going on? Well, if you're worried about that clicking noise, typically, you're either gonna have to take apart the axle to analyze it or just replace the axle.

Let's see what's going on in here. Now on the outboard CV joint right here, you can tell that this just kind of spins around like that it's got a whole bunch of ball bearings in there. And essentially, this is just gonna keep it at a constant velocity with the transmission speed to the wheel speed. This is great. But, if you get a little bit of movement inside this area where the ball joint's supposed to ride in, maybe it's a little bit worn down, that ball could potentially be moving around in there, and that could be able to twist a little bit. So, if you can take your axle, and you can twist it like that, that's gonna cause a noise. Other than that, on the other side, you have the other point. Now this side has these little needle bearings inside here. Essentially, this just kind of spins right like that. And those needle bearings are gonna keep everything flowing smoothly. If dirt or debris made its way inside there and binds any of these up, you could potentially hear noise, but overall generally, if you hear noise, it's gonna be coming from your outside CV joint. That's the side that kind of turns a little bit more when you're turning your wheel.

Lastly, on an axle, you're gonna have an area that presses into the transmission itself. Like I said, right along here, on these axles, you're gonna find that you have a little lock ring or a snap ring right on them. Once you push these into the transmission that's supposed to lock in. If for some reason when you are tugging on that knuckle trying to get the strut out of there, maybe you pop the axle out of the transmission a little bit and you didn't notice it, you get your strut back in there, you're putting everything back together, you give the knuckle a couple loving bonks just to drive it in a little bit so you can knock that ball joint into the knuckle there. Next thing, you know, you've got too much pressure on your axle on the CV joints here that's causing excessive pressure which of course is gonna cause extra wear, and it could potentially cause noise while you're driving down the road.

Now this next one's kind of like a twofer. I had two separate people asking me basically the same question. They were wondering, well, if you just go ahead and replace the front struts, why do I have to go ahead and replace the rear shocks? Well, like I said in the video, the car is going down the same exact road with the front struts, as it is the rear shocks. So, of course, every bump that you hit with the front, you're more than likely gonna hit it in the rear as well. All these parts are gonna break down over time. It really only makes sense to replace them all at the same time, especially if you're gonna be getting yourself a four-wheel alignment in the end, because why do the front struts now? Get yourself a four-wheel alignment. Go for another inspection half a year later. Turns out you need rear shocks. Now you need to go ahead and get yourself another four-wheel alignment. Why does that make any sense? Some people might say, "Oh, sure, I just have all the money in the world. And I can just spend money all willy-nilly, why don't I just replace the engine at the same time, or even just go buy a brand new car with an extended warranty?" Well, you could do that too, if you wanted to. And I'm not trying to tell you how to spend your money. But for me, personally, I like to try to get things done right. I wanna be as safe as possible. And I don't need to go ahead and spend a whole bunch of extra money down the road, getting two four-wheel alignments.

Now this next question comes from somebody with a name that I can't even pronounce. So, I'm not necessarily gonna try it. No offense. Essentially, what they're asking me though, is they wanna know if you can just go to any shop and have them do a coil over strut like this for you? Or do you have to go to a specialty shop and have them go ahead and do it? Well, I can't really speak for every shop out there, because everybody just kind of does their own thing. But every shop that I've ever worked at prefers to make sure that their technicians are as safe as possible. So, if they don't have the proper tools to be able to do the job, they'd probably rather not have them do it. As long as you go to a shop that has one of these machines that are right here, you're gonna be good to go. Even a shop that maybe has a couple of these, this isn't really the safest, I wouldn't recommend it. But I'm not necessarily gonna tell somebody else how to do their job. For me personally, you know me, I like to be as safe as possible. Do you need to go to a specialty shop? No, I don't think that you do, you can pretty much go to any shop that like I said has the proper safety material for you to be able to do the job.

Click, that one's for my buddy Dave Something. Now, Dave Something commented, torque wrench, question mark exclamation point, isn't that just something where you go ahead and you take a nice big breaker bar with a pipe on the end of it. You give it a couple good tugs till it feels like it's nice and tight and give it a click sound just like that. And that should be tight enough. Well, sure, Dave, that's probably true. But what might you do if you go ahead and over-torque something? Something as basic as your lug nuts, if over-torqued could potentially cause some damage. You have some lug studs that are supposed to be attached to the wheel bearing and they essentially hold the wheel to the car itself. Now, if you overtighten those lug nuts, you're gonna stretch the lug stud, and that could potentially cause some damage to the actual metal itself. And you never really know what the breaking point is. You might think you got it nice and snug, you drive down the road, you hit a couple bumps. And maybe that stud was pretty much at its breaking point and it just snaps right off. Now all you've got is four lug nuts on this particular application trying to hold the wheel on. If you overtightened any of those as well, you might still have an issue with any of the others as well.

Not just that, but almost every other component on your car has a specific torque specification made up by the manufacturer. They know exactly how tight everything should be. So that way there you don't necessarily damage anything along the way. Think about it like your bearing, you have your axle that goes through your wheel bearing and then you're supposed to have a nut that goes on there. You go ahead and you tighten it down to manufacturer's specifications. it squeezes it in nice and tight, but it holds it the way that it needs to be. Let's say that I went ahead and I used a nice breaker bar like this in my pipe on there, and I just bounced on the thing, right? I might overtighten that. And at that point, I could potentially crush those bearings in, which is gonna cause excessive friction and eventually cause noise. And then I have to replace the bearing.

Now, I can't say that we haven't all grabbed a ratchet go ahead and tighten things up without actually taking care of the torque spec in general. It's something that we do. Not everybody has a torque wrench laying around, or even wants to take the time to try to look up the specs and then go to their bench, go ahead and get their torque wrench and then tighten it down. A lot of times people just kind of go with the tighten it up feels like it's snug, give it a little extra, it's good to go. Generally, that's perfectly fine. But if it's something that's holding your wheel on, or it's a specific component that needs to be torqued, overall, it's the best idea to make sure that you torque it to the manufacturer specifications.

Okay friends, so I had a little bit of fun making this video partially because I've wanted to talk to you about things. I read all of your comments. I love them all. I love it when you tell me things that you think that maybe even don't agree with things that I say, that's fine. I don't mind a difference of opinion. We've all got different ways of doing things. I love your questions too, by the way. Keep them coming, get on there, and type out any question that you might have that's car related, something that you wanna have answered. Who knows, maybe I'm gonna read it one day and maybe I'll get out here and do another video for you answering that question. If you like the video, go ahead and smash that like button for me, will mean the world. While you're at it, go and subscribe, ring the bell, that way there you, and all of your friends can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.

What? What? I think you got it nice and snug. You drive down the road. You hit a pf couple bonks, a couple of bonks. Now, you saw on the video.