[s-cars] My baby has been scarred - Upper Strut Mount FAILURE!!!!! - Upda...

[QSHIPQ at aol.com]

That S car mount is pretty tough IME.  Sometimes I've observed a bad
installation.  You can trap that lower cup washer against the upper camber plate on
install of new shocks or install of new upper mounts.  When this happens, you
have a gap of about 2.5in between the washer and the upper bearing.  Then when
this works it's way past the camber plate, that couple inches of travel can
pound the mount pretty severely.  On the 5ktq race car I service, the strut to
hood damage is still present after the previous owner had done an severe
offtrack excursion (no tire blowout tho).  When audi went to this reinforced rib
design for the upper strut bearing, I've never heard of a failure unless
incorrectly installed.

HTH

Scott Justusson
QSHIPQ Performance Tuning
In a message dated 11/18/2003 6:03:36 AM Central Standard Time,
mark.pollan at mci.com writes:
Thanks for the sanity check Paul - yes indeed I was referring to the
presence of the washer under the strut mount.  One thing I did not mention
previously was that I could compress the strut piston by hand, so at least
from that 15 second evaluation it does not appear as though the strut may
have seized.

I really would like to get to the actual cause of this failure as this has
me a bit uneasy.

Regards,

Mark