I notice that most of the usual suspects are selling the alloy bearing carriers and the shock/ spring tube seperately. Has anybody ever changed a shock/ spring tube? How is the tube held into the bearing carrier?
I have a couple of rear struts which could do with swapping. Just wondered how difficult this would be?
The alloy is heated with a torch (oxi/acetylene) or in an oven to around 300 degrees Fahrenheit and the steet tube pressed in. Ice water in the steel tube will give you a little more time to work. There is not a lot of time to do this in any event. There is no mechanical fastening.
I’m curious…what’s wrong with your struts that they need swapping?
I thought that unless they’ve been damaged in an accident they’d pretty much last forever.
( I know the dampening doesn’t but you shove an insert in to fix that.)
No sadly they do not last forever, I think the main problem is the salt on our British roads. I bought 2 second hand struts and one had a crack in the ally casting and the other one was badly pitted where the bearing sits so I had to bash it very hard to get the bearing out which is now loose.
So, I now have another 2 struts from Simon (cheers Simon) these ally casings are much better (new bearing is tight in the casting) but the tubes are quite rusted. It seams that the salt and water sits in the spring platform and rots the tube. I am going to use these tubes but the tubes on the other struts are in better condition, so if it was easy to swap them I would have done that.
It sounds like swapping the tubes is not something I could do at home so I will try cleaning and painting the tubes to hopefully get a few more years out of them.
Yes, there are a couple of holes in them already, I may open them up a bit. Just thought if the tubes can be bought new then it must be easy to change, but apparently not