VAP

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There's a gazillion ways to do something wrong. There's seldom more than one way to do something right... NO, I mean Really, REALLY right!

In this pic is a Bilstein sport strut along-side it's threaded cap. There's 2 walls encasing the Bilstein hydraulic rod. The upper edge of the outer-most wall is what "must" seat inside the machined recess inside the cap visible immediately next to the wiper/seal that prevents foreign matter entering the shock body.

You can see in this pic that these Bilsteins were assembled correctly in their strut housings. There's two telltale give-aways:

1. Paint is missing around the top of the Bilstein outer sleeve.

2. There's a circumferential "wear ring" around the inside of the threaded cap where that paint was lost when torquing. Accompanied by the perfectly centered wear ring on the bottom of the shock seat shown in separate pic earlier. This is iron-clad proof that this strut was installed/aligned perfectly.

The machined recess in the cap is 1.5mm deep. Not uncoincidentally the thread pitch on the cap and strut tubes is also 1.5mm. That means you get one full turn of the threaded cap that both allows the cartridge upper shoulder to enter this guide and become fully seated against it's upper seat. If your a single turn short of the seated position you dont have the Bilstein contained or locked in position. If your strut caps dont turn freely or have rust, grit and debris in their threads you simply cannot know if you accomplished the task of getting the strut cartridge inside and fully seated in this guide/seat or if you've simply bottomed out the strut caps in rust-filled and or gauled/dirty threads before the strut is locked into place.

Next pic/post will show more...

VAP

<center><img src="http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/711/alignmentsleeve5.jpg"></center><p>many/most of you get worse rust. Some of you get 10x this much annually. Admittedly trying to bring these threads back to life is a LOT like work, even for me. I have no magic tool... either a wire brush grinding wheel or a hand-held wire brush. Since I dont wanna swap grinding wheels I opted for the "grunt" method. With effort and elbow grease the threads can be brought back to life. No one likes doing it. Hell I didnt like doing just this one which is from a strut housing thats cut in half... it goes in the dumpster tomorrow. But your car, your call.

This is an average 12 year old strut from around my part of the country. But If I tried to install a new Bilstein in it how would I know if it was fully seated or if my caps were bottoming-out on rusty threads instead?

VAP

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Yes, this took a good hour but if you cant make the time to do it right the first time where ya gonna find the time to do it over!?! And it's virtually guaranteed you WILL be doing it over!

Now it's all-too easy to know if my Bilstein cartridge is centered within the machined sleeve/seat and tightly held there. How you ask? Easy! I can now thread my strut caps all the way on my threaded housings with no strut installed easily, by hand... way past where the Bilstein would've stopped the cap and all the way until the strut tube bottoms-out against the top of the threaded cap's underside with no strut installed. And thats with "dry" threads. YES!!! By Hand!!! If you cant't R&amp;R your strut caps fully until tubes bottom out in the cap DO NOT install your struts... you're not done yet!!!

When your cap goes on that easily there can be no doubt if the Bilstein is centered/seated between the strut cap seat and the cupped seat in bottom of strut tube. You can literally feel it "snick" in its lower cupped seat as well as its upper sleeve/seat. And even before the cap is fully tightened there is zero lateral play or movement at the hydraulic rod no matter how hard you tug, push or pull it. You can do it and feel it all by hand... no tools and/or hard-to-turn parts due to icky threads. Its an easily perceived difference... while not overly pretty it's a precision part now. You can also tell when it's seated against something rather than just encountering bad/rusted threads. Same way a new nut/bolt behave when spinning the nut on the bolt all the way up when it encounters the bolt head, ie; "sudden/abrupt" stop.

Now the rubber sleeves I discussed earier are a good idea... effective and cheap insurance. But if all Bilsteins were installed using these methods I doubt anyone would have had a single issue. I mean I've done a Bilstein or two in my day and I've never had it happen. But I can see how easily it could go south if not cautious, careful and exceedingly thorough.

Now once you do this, protect your project... paint the tubes &amp; exposed threads after Bilsteins are installed and use 242 LocTite on the threads and torque to spec... don't guess! Paint helps keep threads from re-rusting and LocTite seals internal threads, keeping rust out and the caps from loosening.

quattro.pilot

I wanna hear about this monster 12v

imhoy

<img src="http://pictureposter.audiworld.com/116836/pc310030.jpg">

Which leads to:
<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v69/imhoy/audi%20cq/P1010028.jpg">

All of this was due to either incorrect reassebly by the previous owner or just lack of maintenance and common sense. In any case it cost me a new set of front Bilsteins.

Regenmeister

To be perfectly honest it's not that hard to do this job. It's as easy as wiping your azz.

520

3rd option: I had my struts sand-blasted - it came out like new!

VAP

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nickle-plated with splines machined into housings for height-adjustable quick-ratio lightweight alloy steering arms with titanium tie rods and spherical rod ends.

But I don't think "most" are gonna lay their car up while doing anything more than wire-brushing the threads. Ostensibly it would appear most have never done even that much previously.

Additional options are likely not going to be exercised as the primary interest here seems to be limited to getting new struts in and the daily driver back on the road ASAP.

There's a hundred more options I could've recommended but I knew it'd fall on deaf ears. If everyone would buy a pair of cheap replacement strut assemblies to work on with a new pair of Bilsteins (or other) they'd have a LOT more time to do em really really right.

Basically just clean the damn things thoroughly, exercise common sense and get-r-done!

audi80greece

hey can these shocks and springs as a kit can be mounted on an RS2?

VAP

using strut tubes from CQ rear and Ground Control coilover adapter sleeves.