Bad news -- I stripped one brace nut during my Stillen FSTB install on my Y2K SE. Can't understand why -- I was torquing to 35 ft lbs per the factory manual. If I had used Stillen's recommended 43+ ft lbs, I might have taken out more than one. Anyone else experience this?

I can't tell if the nut or the stud is stripped, plus the nut does not want to come off. Oh well! I just happen to have a set of Tokico struts on-hand. Guess I'll move up my install date and change out offending assembly at the same time. I do have a 1,500 mile road trip first, so I'll keep an eye on the 'bad nut.'

 

uh-oh... thats not good.... you are probably going to have to cut the nut off... hopefully, just the nut got messed up and the stud is still ok.

 

That doesn't sound too good. If you can prove that you put it on with a properly adjusted torque bar you may be able to get it done on warantee.

 

Good news on this one. The metal in the nut is softer than the strut tower stud. I broke the offending nut off w/ a nut splitter (Ouch!) and ran a 10mm x 1.25 die down the stud to clean out the threads. I reinstalled the FSTB brace and torqued a new nut on the cleaned up stud to the factory spec (35 ft lbs). Note that the most common die if you have a Tap & Die set is 10mm X 1.50 (diffenet thread spacing), so make sure have the correct size die.

 

glad to hear it was only a messed up bolt....

 

it was kinda hard to install the fstb too, the nuts were hard to fasten. good for you .