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I was looking around at the offereings for strut rods and noticed how insanely expensive they were.... (pulled mine out and the passenger side had a touch of bow in it) anyways I believe I have devised an effective way to build your own for far less than $100. I started by making a plate with 2 13mm holes just to shore up the factory holes on the lower arm. I then simply bolted the back hole thru the arm with a 1/2-20 grade 8 bolt/nut/lock washer. on the front hole I mounted a heim (5/8-18 lh 1/2 thru hole) horizontaly with a 3/8 spacer between it and the affore mentioned plate and also mounted it with a shouldered 1/2-20 grade 8 bolt nut lock washer. At the front where the factory s/r mount is on the side closest to the wheel I saw there were 3 spot welds that held the mount in place. I centered up between these locations (i figured 2 pieces of steel were better than one) and drilled a 41/64 hole thru the mount. Thru this hole I placed a 5/8-18 grade 8 shouldered bolt and heim(5/8-18 rh 5/8 thru hole) and made spacers to keep the heim centered in place. Iam still working on making some roller spring perches and doing a uca drop but from the way it looks i am going to need about a 15-16 inch sawge tube to tie them together when the car gets set back down. I came up with about $10 a piece for heims about $15 a piece for swage tubes and about $10 for nuts and bolts at my local manufacturing supply. the 1/4 plate i made to weld to the top of the arm I had laying in the garage. Sorry its kinda mid process and I dont have any pics yet but if anyone wants any or sees any problems with my thinking here Id be glad to help/hear it. Bo

I have pulled the front strut rod (drivers side) on my 69. When I followed the shop manual, it said to pry the forward washer forward with two 18in pry bars on either side to "separate the inner sleeve from the outer sleeve". My parts are all original (I believe), and these sleeves were stuck so bad that I pulled the flange of the inner sleeve through the hole in the forward washer. See pic. No big deal really since I have a rebuild kit. However, the rebuild kit I have doesn't use the inner/outer sleeve design. My new kit has a single "fairly thick" sleeve, 2 bumpers, 2 washers - but only a single piece that could go on either the front side of the frame hole, or the back side. The pic shows this configuration. There are no instructions with the kit. Does it even matter which side I put the "frame washer" (for lack of a better word)? Let me know if anyone has any idea how this is supposed to go... Thanks, Jay