How to Stake Strut Mounts to the Suspension

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Nat McCullough on behalf of expertvillage.com. In this clip we are going to talk about the proper way to stake your lower strut to suspension knuckle connections. Now not on this particular vehicle but on most vehicles out there these bolt holes would be elongated which would allow a alinement's angle to be adjusted there. The angle that they would adjust there is called camber. If these bolt holes are elongated they would allow the wheel to pinch in and out. When you disassemble this if you don't have the original position marked when you have it all put back together you are going to have to see a professional mechanic with a alinement's machine to reset that angle for you. So to avoid carrying that additional cost what you are going to do is stake these bolts. Just so you know where to put them back to when reassembling. You could either use a can of spray paint and paint the connection just to leave your mark but then you have to wait for the paint to dry before you could work on it. I use a chisel. A chisel from my old broken air hammer and what I will do is just line up between the strut and the knuckle and give it a swap. That would put marks there that I can then line up on reassembly. It doesn't really matter where you put your marks as long as you could see them. You want to use two. One on the upper bolt and one on the lower bolt. Like I said in this particular vehicle the adjustment is made on the inside here but on most vehicles the adjustment is made down here."