The over all mechanics of it is simple enough, but I cannot for the life of me get the top or bottom strut to knuckle bolts to budge, and the same goes for the top piston bolt. Any ideas?

Get yourself a mapp gas torch and a breaker bar or piece of pipe, i've taken out many a 33 year old bolts that hanvent moved sence they left detroit by just torching the hell out of them and if they still wont move take out the breaker bar.

The strut to knuckle bolts get torqued to something like 135 ft lbs, so I imagine it could take a bit of effort to break them loose.

I used an 18 inch pipe wrench and bounced all my weight on it. Use the force, Luke: leverage!

I busted a set apart a week ago.. It was tough, but not impossible. I've got the biggest 1/2" breaker bar that Sears makes (resembles a baseball bat) and a section of fence post for tasks such as this. Did the trick!

Anyone have a novel scheme for removing the nut at the top of the strut, w/o destroying stuff? I took apart the front end of a car at the junkyard, and we had to resort to torches because the shaft was spinning with the nut. Kinda made a mess of the car.. I hope not to have to do it that way on mine!

Impact wrench worked for me. I used a pneumatic one on the piston bolt, and an electric one on the knuckle bolts.

i just used my torque wrench and sprayed it with liquid wrench

Chemical warfare does work fairly well here. Soak the bolts in the spray on lubricant of your choice, tap with a hammer a few times, reapply. Go inside for the smoke of your choice, relax for an hour, go back out, reapply. Come back in the morning, use a breaker bar, or power tool if available, and they will come off without too much trouble.

I agree with the last post lots of wd-40 or something similar and a breaker bar. The bolt is torqued to like 135 lb-ft so some muscle is required.

I wouldn't do that anymore. When a torque wrench is used to break loose bolts or nut like that it really messes with the calibration. Just my two cents worth.

Mark

I used the same method as gravitar for the lower bolts. I was able to get a couple of them loose with an impact wrench, and the other ones took a breaker bar with a long piece of pipe slipped over it, and me jumping on the pipe while using the fender of the car to keep my balance! I slipped a big crescent wrench on the big nut on the backside of the bolt and rotated it until the wrench was locked in place against the spindle. As far as the upper nut, the stems of my struts have an internal hex in the top of them, so all you have to do to keep them from rotating is use an allen wrench to hold the stem still while you loosen the nut with an open end wrench. You may want to put a small piece of pipe over the allen wrench while you do this as it gets hard to hold if the nut is fairly tight.

If you use a breaker bar that long, wear gloves... you don't want the bolt to snap, and you slam your hand into the concrete... or the breaker bar into your face!

I had bent my spindle a while ago by hopping over a newly poured curb (as in, very high). When I swapped it out, I could break the nuts free, but barely turn the bolts. Turned out the bolts bent! I wonder if the same has happened to your car. I had to hammer them out. See if you can un-do the nuts.

I let some Napa Penetrating oil soak for a while into the bolts then I had no problem. Nice big craftsman combo wrench, sitting on my rear, and pulling hard.