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Stut mounts going, request your wisdom.

KZOO3800

KZOO3800

New member
97 Grand Prix SE with 3.8 NA.
163K miles, all stock
Dirt road...

I bought my '97 Grand Prix with 159K miles, had no problems to date. Paid

$1,400 for it and pretty sure I stole it from the sap who sold it to

me. If I had the money I'd rebuild the engine and trans but I'm in my last

semester of college and cant afford it until summer...

I live on a dirt road, a BAD one. I'm talking about craters, not

potholes. You could fit a fat lady and her whole plus-size wardrobe in

these things... I've only put 4K on this car and i do no more than 15MPH

down the road, no exceptions, but I can hear the struts knocking into the

mounts from the wear and tear.

My '94 Ford Escort would have driven to the moon and back, were it not for

the "punch-through" symptom. Rear left strut came up through the mounting

hardware and took out an Alpine speaker that was right above it. My guru

machinist father and I welded the top of the strut back into the mounting

surface with a solid chunk of steel. The fix lasted 6 months, then the surrounding, rusted out

portions of the mounting surface "unzipped" around our handy work...

Rocking the front end of my Grand Prix up and down by hand, the visible rubber portions of

the mounts are "squishy". My concern is that the struts may punch through

the mounts as they did on my '94 escort, or that the struts themselves may

break from repeated, undamped impacts with the metal parts of what they're

mounted to.

I'm paranoid about the struts punching through the rusted out mounting surface, and my question is: can you replace just the hardware/surface that the top of a strut mounts to?
 


If your strut towers (metal, part of the body) are rusted, then what happened to your Escort is a likely outcome for your GP. But in any case, before that happens you can very cheaply replace the mounts that attach the strut to the body since they are bolted on. But its the same amount of work to replace the strut at the same time since you'll have to take the strut out to replace the mounts.
 
I know its a stupid question since I'm mechanically inclined... Just seems like it would make a LOT MORE sense if the very top of the strut towers could be replaced, AKA attached by a few bolts.

The actual tower in general looks ok on my gp, no excessive rust except right by the mount. On the Escort the whole area of the body was rusted... Is it possible to replace the strut tower or would I have to find a talented body mechanic/fabricator?
 


any parts store has the strut mounts.

If its surface rust on the strut tower then you could try prep and paint.

Once its rotted out you basically need a pro to fix it. (new car time)
 
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