What is a Strut Mount Compress Spring?

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Nate McCullough on behalf of ExpertVillage.com. In this clip, we're going to talk about the proper way to compress your vehicle's coil spring. As you can see, this is the coil spring. Now, with the strut assembled, this spring is compressed. In other words, it has stored up some potential energy. What we have to do is to cage that potential energy so we don't hurt ourselves if we remove this nut. If we were to not compress this spring and just take the top nut off, that spring is going to release all of that potential energy and shoot all over the place, possibly killing or severely injuring yourself. Now, what we have on here is a universal style strut compressor. It's a series of hooks, like so, that grips a hold of the spring. It has these safety pins that pop in place so that the spring can't come out on us. We have those all popped where they should be. And, it's got drive screw mechanisms. What that's gonna do is squeeze together and release and hold the tension on that spring. So that we can then safely remove our upper nut. Now, what I'm going to do is scoot up here on my milk crate, and hold onto this guy with my legs and run it down with my speed wrench. Oop. Okay, you're going to continue on tightening from side to side in that manner until you have the spring compressed enough that it's pulled away from the strut mount. "