First off its not what you may be thinking.

So I recently acquired a 2009 Cobalt with the 2.2 (LAP), coupe, manual and right after I fixed the worn out clutch I began straight away with making it less of a monster truck. I purchased some cheapo springs off eBay (LoTek springs). Put the front passenger side o. No issue but when i got to the drivers side I ran in to an issue. The inner bolt for where the the shock tower mounts has broken loose from being pressed in. It just spins in place. After being pissed off for about an hour i set about putting the rears springs on to give me some time to think and I came up with an idea.

Rather than cutting the bolt off and only being attached by two bolts.... would it be possible to compress the spring and pull the king nut off leaving the hat attached? This way the top stays with the car, pull the strut out, put the new spring on and put it all back together.

Would that pose any issues?

I have to say I am SUPER impressed with how well these springs look and how they perform with only 3 of the 4 on. I do not have ANY vibration, knocking, noises or any other horrors i read about. The springs claim to drop 2 and 2.25. Granted i have only had them on since Thursday but im racking my brain how to do this without buying new fro t struts. They were just relpaced at 100K and the car just rolled 118K.

I guess i could cut the bolt off since its not doing a whole lot of good but i figured id check opinions here first. Sorry for being so long winded....

Heres how she sits thus far...







Ill take some better pics outside. Ran out to snap a few because threads are worthless without pics

/blathering

 

I threw these on my HHR for fun they collapsed under the increased weight (coils stacked and made bouncy bounce), looks cool but grenaded the struts in 8 months, oh ya they handle light **** too. Swapping for stocks for winter next month then saving for BCnSwifts for spring time.

 

I know. Time will tell about the springs but i am more looking in to if my idea is effing crazy or makes sense.

 

Other than the issue of getting the spring compressor to fit correctly in the housing, I don't see a major issue. You just want to make sure the spring is lined up correctly first.

 

Don't even bother with the spring compressor. If the car is already sitting on the ground, just zip off that "king nut" with an impact driver. Then, as you jack the front of the car up, the strut will come right out of the strut mount. The spring length is comparable to the extended strut length, so there isn't much of a threat of the spring launching something in this situation. If you had the strut/spring combo out of the car, definitely use the spring compressors for dis/assembly.

HOWEVER, strut mounts are cheap. Do yourself a favor and just replace the strut mount entirely. Don't go driving around with a loose bolt like that.

 

This
get ahold of tom at ced he got some shipped out to me quick good dude just be sure to put alignment marks on everything